Traveling abroad – the top choice

Vietnamese travelers choose outbound tours instead of domestic tours, because it is less costly to travel abroad

According to Nguyen Minh Man from Vietravel, “the demand for Vietnamese traveling abroad has increased by 30-40 percent over the previous year.”

The fees of outbound tours have been kept unchanged, or have just increased by as little of 10 percent. Vietravel said it plans to serve 19,000 travelers on April 30th holiday. Currently, 15,000 travelers have booked tours so far.

Representatives from other travel firms also agree that Vietnamese travelers now prefer traveling abroad, because outbound tours are much cheaper than domestic tours. It is clear that domestic tours cannot compete with outbound tours. Also, foreign countries prove to be by far more professional than Vietnam in exploiting their tourism sites.

Travel firms are offering a tour from HCM City to Cambodia (4 days and 3 nights) with the tour fee of 3.2 - 4.2 million dong per traveler. A tour to Thailand (5 days and 4 nights) costs 6.2 - 6.6 million dong per traveler.

Meanwhile, a tour from HCM City to Hanoi, Ninh Binh, Ha Long Bay and Bac Ninh (4 days and 3 nights) costs 8.6 - 9.3 million dong per traveler. Travelers would have to pay 7.5 million dong for a tour to Phu Quoc island, which lasts three days and two nights.

The tours to Thailand, China, Cambodia, Singapore and Malaysia prove to be most attractive to Vietnamese travelers. Most of the outbound markets remain stable, except Japan, which has been severely affected by the earthquake and tsunami in March.

While domestic tours all have seen sharp tour fee increases, thus becoming less attractive to Vietnamese travelers, outbound tours remain very attractive after some Asian markets have launched promotion campaigns, with big discounts and offered gifts. Especially; the transport fee, hotel room rates and meal services have remain unchanged.

According to travel firms…in the past, 60 percent of Vietnamese people would choose to travel domestically, while 40 percent would like to travel abroad. However, the proportion has inversed into 40 and 60. Even travel firms also like organizing outbound tours, because the expenses prove to be stable which does not take travel firms much time to recalculate tour fees regularly.

Domestic tours becoming too expensive

Travel firms say they have got puzzled because of the sharp increases of all kinds of goods and services. The firms have to raise the domestic tour fees by 30-50 percent due to the higher airfares, electricity, petroleum and food prices; even though they know that the tour fee increases would not attract travelers.

Especially, travel firms have warned that the current tour fees may still be raised towards the holiday, because the input costs continue increasing.

“We are sure of taking a loss if serving crowded groups in domestic tours. We would rather to sell tours to separate travelers or providing outbound tours,” said Dinh Quang Luc, General Director of South Pacific travel firm. “Everything is getting more and more expensive, thus making travel firms distressed. However, in fact, travelers will be the biggest sufferers”.

In explaining the domestic tour fee increases, travel firms say that there are no big national tourism promotion campaigns this year, therefore, the firms cannot negotiate for best airfares and service fees.

In 2009-2010, when Vietnam launched the “Impressive Vietnam” national tourism promotion campaign, travel firms, hotels, service providers all joined forces to attract travelers, which allowed to reduce the tour fee by 20-35 percent.

C. V