Vietnam Travel Articles & Vietnam News

The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday, or Tet, turned out to be a golden opportunity for local travel agencies and operators of entertainment and tourism parks to make money in the new season.

Numerous large tour operators in Ho Chi Minh City such as Ben Thanh Tourist, Fiditourist, Vietravel, Saigontourist and Lien Bang Travelink reported good performance during the Tet holiday for both outbound and inbound tourism segments.

Travel agencies in Ho Chi Minh City have been kept busy booking foreign tours as residents seek to take advantage of a nine-day Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday.

The number of bookings for foreign tours offered by major companies like Saigontourist, Vietravel and Fiditour have increased between 20 and 30 per cent compared with last year’s Tet season.

Most customers are buying tours to Asian countries and to Europe, the companies say.

Although cultural heritage has been proven to play an important role in contemporary life, the preservation and promotion of such heritage in Vietnam has faced many challenges and difficulties. Nhan Dan Online interviewed Nguyen Huu Toan, Deputy Director of the Culture Heritage Department of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, about this issue.

Vietnam possesses a large number of heritage sites and relics but it is undeniable that few of them are being properly preserved and many have degraded significantly. How do you explain this?

With 14 consecutive exchange rate adjustments within one month, companies of Vietnam tour fear that they may lose travelers because they cannot keep the tour fees stable.

Since the beginning of October, the State Bank of Vietnam has adjusted the dong/dollar exchange rate 14 times, making the Vietnam dong depreciate by 160 dong per dollar. If comparing with September 7, when the Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam stated that it will not devalue the dong by more than one percent by the end of the year, the interbank exchange rate has increased by 0.78 percent.

Ho Chi Minh City needs a promotion center for MICE (meeting, incentive, convention and exhibition) tourism, which will play a leading role in the development of this important type of tourism in the future.

In a study on MICE tourism in the city, the Hotel Management Division under the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism has mentioned the role of such a center to host conferences and exhibitions.

Instead of carrying out unhealthy competitions to scramble for travelers and following the principle of “every man for himself”, companies of Vietnam tour, accommodation service, transport, meal and entertainment service providers have been told to join forces for the sake of the development of Vietnam’s tourism.

Every man for himself

Hoi An Town in the central province of Quang Nam has a total of 1,017 ancient heritage buildings, 103 of which are badly in need of repairs from which 40 are already becoming fast crumbling ruins.

The Hoi An Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation Center has asked the People’s Committee to order immediate closure of four private heritage homes that are badly in need of repairs in Hoi An Town to ensure tourist safety.

In people’s thoughts, touring in Hanoi means visiting ancient streets, watching water puppetry, visiting Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the Museum of Ethnology. The itinerary has not changed over the last many years.

It is estimated that 40 percent of travelers o­nly stay in Hanoi as a transit point before leaving for other tourism sites.

Having dinner, watching water puppetry, and that’s all

Growth of Vietnam tourism depends on adequate and appropriate infrastructure, which serves the needs of tourists and encourages further investment by enterprises in the competitive tourism industry.

The government had tried to help the Vietnam travel industry to mobilize investment capital for infrastructure with its strategic promotional program “Vietnam tourism development, 2001-2010” that eventually attracted investments for 316 projects.

It is now the high inbound tourism season. However, companies of Vietnam tour seem to be not too optimistic about the number of travelers.

The high inbound tourism season in winter lasts from October to March. While some travel firms put high hopes on the new season, many others only wish they will have the same number of clients as the same period of the last year. Especially, some have reported sharp falls in the number of travelers who have booked tours so far.