VietNamNet
Bridge – The summer travel season kicked
off one month ago, when travel firms launched attractive tours with promised
attractive discounts. However, despite the great efforts by airlines and travel
firms to stimulate the demand, the number of travelers who have booked tours so
far remains modest.
After
the gloomy May holiday travel season, travel firms put a high hope that the
situation would be improved in the summer travel season, especially when the
tour fees would be slashed with the cooperation of air carriers.
However,
it seems that people still keep indifferent to the information about the demand
stimulus program.
The
year 2011 witnessed the boom in the tourism demand in summer, when the number
of travelers increased by 30 percent, far beyond the expectation of travel
firms. However, things are quite different now. One third of the summer travel
season has elapsed, while travel firms still cannot see any significant
increases in the number travelers.
Analysts
have attributed the low demand to the economic downturn which has forced people
to cut down expenses on tourism and other luxurious needs. Instead of booking
tours, travelers nowadays tend to organize tours themselves, while they only
order transport and hotel services.
After
the global economic crisis in 2008-2009, Vietnamese travel firms, which
previously focused on exploiting foreign markets, have been trying to target
domestic travelers by developing domestic tours. Their efforts have led to the
annual growth rate of 25-30 percent in terms of number of tourists in the last
few years. Especially, in 2011, travel firms served 30 million domestic
travelers.
According
to Vu The Binh, Deputy Chair of the Vietnam Tourism Association, the domestic
tour market segment remains very potential for travel firms to exploit. Vietnam
has the total population of 90 million people, while it has 30 million
travelers a year. Meanwhile, China has 1.3 billion people, but has 1.2 billion
domestic travelers. Especially, the turnover from domestic tours brings 70
percent of the total turnover of the industry.
However,
due to the unreasonable provisions of the tourism law, travel firms have been
facing big barriers when trying to develop domestic tours.
Pham
Duc Hoa, a senior executive of Saigontourist, said on Saigon giai phong, that
the unhealthy competition has led to the quiet summer travel season this year.
Since
travel firms try to slash tour fees to scramble for travelers, they can only
provide low quality services. This has resulted in travelers turning their
backs on low cost tours, because they believe that low cost tours mean low
quality tours.
Phap
luat TPHCM newspaper has quoted its sources as saying that in the last two
months, May and June, only 500,000 travelers could enjoy the preferential tours
with fee discounts, organized under the demand stimulus program.
Tran
The Dung, Deputy Head of the taskforce on domestic tour demand stimulus team,
said on Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon on June 18 that of the 19 travel firms joining
the demand stimulus program, only five can book cheap air tickets for their
clients.
To
date, the national flag air carrier Vietnam Airline and Vietjet Air have joined
the demand stimulus program. The former one began offering the 40 percent price
discount in May 2012. With the airfare reduction, travel firms have designed
the new tours which are 30 percent cheaper than normal tours.
Also
according to Dung, the problem lies in the Vietnam Airlines’ requirement to
book tickets several months in advance, which proves to be impossible for
travel firms, because travelers always book tours just some days before the
departure time.
C.
V
Business & Investment Opportunities
YourVietnamExpert is a division of Saigon Business Corporation Pte Ltd, Incorporated in Singapore since 1994. As Your Business Companion, we propose a range of services in Strategy, Investment and Management, focusing Healthcare and Life Science with expertise in ASEAN. We also propose Higher Education, as a bridge between educational structures and industries, by supporting international programmes. Many thanks for visiting www.yourvietnamexpert.com and/or contacting us at contact@yourvietnamexpert.com
No comments:
Post a Comment