“Hi everybody! We are reviving!” This was the status posted on the Facebook page of Le Hoang Quan, the owner of a karaoke chain in HCM City. Quan was excited as his karaoke parlor in District 7 was allowed to reopen in late April after it was certified as meeting requirements on fire prevention and control.

Prior to that, the operation of the parlor had been suspended for seven months for upgrading.

Some karaoke parlors of the ICool chain reopened in late April. More than 100 ICool’s workers left their hometown for HCM City to clean up the parlors and prepare to receive the first clients.

“Both managers and workers are overjoyed. We have been waiting for that day for too long. In order to pay for the premises, rent at VND300 million a month, the owner of the enterprise has to mortgage personal assets to borrow money,” a worker told VietNamNet.

The reopening of karaoke parlors has also excited the public. “My family members and I now have one more venue for entertainment on weekends,” said The Hung, 38, in Thu Duc City.

According to the HCM City Police Department of Fire Prevention, Fighting and Rescue (PC07), there were 449 karaoke parlors, discotheque halls and bars in the locality. The figure dropped to 396 by March 2023, because 36 had been dissolved and 17 had shifted to other business types.

Though some karaoke parlors have resumed operation, business performance is unsatisfactory.

According to Quan, there are only 20-30 bookings a day, or just one fourth or one fifth of previous days. The business performance now is even worse than when karaoke parlors began reopening after Covid-19. 

Quang thinks there are two reasons behind the lackluster days of the karaoke industry. First, economic difficulties, which has forced people to tighten their purse strings. Second, karaoke services seem to have been eliminated from people’s minds after a long period of closure.

Karaoke parlors have to offer a lot of preferences to attract customers back. ICool, for example, has offered a preferential price of VND59,000 per hour for services provided before 6pm, from Monday through Thursday.

Some experts said that it will take at least 2-3 years the entertainment industry to fully recover. At present, all businesses report a sharp fall in revenue and they have to cut down expenses and downsize staff. 

Tran Chung