Hundreds of travel firms at VITM Hanoi 2024, which opened on April 11, offered high discount rates of 10-40 percent and gift offering programs.

Long queues of people were seen in front of travel firms’ stalls at the trade fair on opening day, waiting for their turn to participate in lucky draws.

However, while travel firms offer discounts of up to VND3-4 million for outbound tours, they did not offer the same discounts for domestic ones. The discount for domestic tours was no higher than VND1 million.

Flamingo Redtours, for example, offered a discount of VND4 million for 5-day outbound tours to South Korea (VND12.5 million), while the tour fee to Japan decreased to VND16.9 million, to China (4 days) to VND10 million, and Malaysia-Singapore and Taiwan-China (5 days) to VND11 million.

The offered VND3 million cut was only applied to new tours to Japan. Clients of the company can book special tours with shockingly low prices for 30 minutes, starting at 8pm every evening. But these are all outbound tours.

Meanwhile, the company offers a modest discount of VND1.3 million for domestic tours with Vietnam Airlines’ flights.

The HCM City-based Vietluxtour has promised discounts of VND1-1.5 million per traveler for tours to beach cities, including Nha Trang, Phu Quoc, Phan Thiet, and Con Dao Island, and to the north.

Higher discounts, VND2-3 million per traveler, are offered by the company for outbound tours, expected to depart in the second and third quarters, to Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, Bali, China and Hong Kong. Travelers can enjoy good prices thanks to tourism promotion jointly run by tourism promotion agencies of regional countries.

At the trade fair, Bui Thanh Tu, marketing director of Best Price, told VietNamNet that the company is offering 20-30 percent discounts for outbound tours and 20 percent for domestic tours. The travelers booking tours at the event received a gift.

Two-day tours from Hanoi to Moc Chau has a tour fee of VND1.75 million. Meanwhile, travelers have to pay VND2.65 million for a 3-day tour to Sa Pa, and VND6.29 million for a 3-day tour to Phu Quoc. A modest decrease of VND100,000 was applied to all three tours.

Meanwhile, a higher discount rate of VND400,000 was applied to tours to China, VND1.5 million to tours to Thailand and VND2 million to tours to South Korea.

Vietravel is one of a few travel firms which offer high discount rate of up to 40 percent to domestic tours, because the travel firm owns an air carrier. Thanks to low airfares, travelers can book tours to Nha Trang – Ninh Thuan, Tuy Hoa – Quy Nhon, Central Highlands, Phan Thiet – Mui Ne and Can Tho – Tay Ninh with fees from VND2.39 million only.

The major reason behind high domestic fees is high airfares.

Vietluxtour deputy CEO Nguyen Ngoc An said airfares account for 40-50 percent of tour fees. The sharp airfare rises this year has affected domestic tour fees.

However, An said that the travel firm tries to maintain reasonable tour fees by cooperating with airlines and booking air tickets early. The tickets for tours for the April holiday, for example, were booked in late 2023.

“We design tours in a flexible way, depending on airlines and departure times,” An said.

According to Flamingo Redtours CEO Nguyen Cong Hoan, VITM previously offered tours designed with support from air carriers. This year, most travel firms don’t have preferential domestic tours, and are focusing on outbound tours.

Domestic tours with discounts are mostly ones without flights, while only a few domestic tours enjoy fee reductions.

Meanwhile, outbound tours are attractive thanks to airfare discounts from foreign airlines and foreign countries’ trade promotion agencies in Vietnam.

Foreign stalls accounted for 25 percent of total stalls at VITM 2024. Through Vietnam’s travel firms, South Korean, Japanese, Thai, Singaporean and Malaysian firms gave gifts to travelers at the trade fair.

Thanks to attractive policies, South Korea attracted 118,630 Vietnamese travelers by the end of March 2024.

Ngoc Ha