Tour bookings for the Reunification Day (April 30) and International Labor Day (May 1) holiday have grown 15-25% year-on-year but tour prices have remained mostly unchanged.

The favorite domestic destinations include Phu Quoc Island, Con Dao Island and Nha Trang City. Tours to Danang, Hanoi, Halong, Dalat and Hoi An have also been heavily sold.

Domestic tours by air have been sold out. Only road tours to destinations like Phan Thiet City, Nha Trang City and the Mekong Delta are still open as they are 50-70% full at the moment.

Tran Thi Bao Thu, marketing and communications manager of Fiditour JSC, said the company’s tour programs have been 90% booked.

Many tourists have chosen to travel abroad due to attractive prices, with some companies reporting full foreign tour bookings.

Tran The Dung, deputy director of Young Generation Co Ltd, said his firm has seen good foreign tour sales but its foreign tour sales have declined due to higher airfares and hotel room rates.

A number of tour operators have closed most overseas tours, except for those to other regional countries requiring no entry visa, and road trips to Cambodia.

Tourism companies have enjoyed heavy sales of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea tours. With tourist visa policy loosened and tour prices kept attractive, Taiwan has become one of the top picks of Vietnamese visitors. 

The number of Taiwan tour buyers for the forthcoming holiday has doubled year-on-year as the price of a five-day Taiwan tour is a mere VND9-10 million (US$397.5-441.6) per person.

Tran Thi Viet Huong, deputy head of the Marketing Department at Vietravel, said the number of buyers of overseas tours is lower than that of domestic tours products but profit from foreign tours is higher than that from local tours.

The company expects to serve around 20,000 guests in domestic and overseas tours this holiday, up 15% over the same period last year.

According to a report by the World Tourism Organization, Vietnam is among the top 50 global tourism markets and among the nine markets with double-digit growth. Vietnamese overseas tourism expenditures increased 28% last year.

Data of the Vietnam Tourism Association shows about 6.5 million Vietnamese tourists traveled abroad last year, up about 15% against the previous year, and they spent US$7-8 billion.

Saigon Times