Tourism waits for lifebuoy

Tourism has suffered the most heavily from Covid-19. Nguyen Thi Khanh, deputy chair of the HCM City Tourism Association, said the situation of travel firms is very serious and they need the government’s support to survive the epidemic.

When coronavirus began in China, travel firms lost Chinese travelers, but they still had European travelers.

But the situation is getting worse as the virus has spread rapidly in Europe and the US in the last 10 days. Travel firms fear that they will lose the European markets as well.

Meanwhile, the number of domestic travelers has also dropped dramatically despite their efforts to slash tour fees to stimulate demand.

“We visited a lot of safe destinations, including Phu Yen and Dak Lak to prepare for sale promotion programs, planning to design tours with fee reductions of up to 50 percent. However, travelers are not booking tours now because of the epidemic escalation,” she said.

Covid-19 has had a big impacts on all aspects of the economy and life. However, the effects vary among different business fields.

Local newspapers reported that the government has told banks to launch a VND250 trillion credit package to help businesses overcome difficulties.

However, when businesses contact banks for the package access, they were told that the banks still cannot make disbursement because of the lack of guides.

The representatives of local tourism associations in the tourism cities of Hue, Da Nang and Can Tho also said slashing tour fees was the only thing they can do, but this will be insignificant, if the demand does not improve.

F&B chains

Mai Truong Giang, the owner of a business owning 27 shops with two brands Chewy Chewy and Otoke Chicken, said the turnover has dropped by 30-50 percent.

The street-front restaurants that serve dine-in clients have seen turnover decrease by 30 percent, while sharper turnover decrease is reported for restaurants located in shopping centers which are now deserted.

The owner of a restaurant in Hanoi said he has decided to cut salaries for workers by 40 percent for three months to be able to maintain operation.

Supply chains

The Vietnam Chemicals Group (Vinachem) is one of the big state-owned enterprises facing difficulties because of Covid-19.

Vinchame’s chair Nguyen Phu Cuong said the company has major materials for production, but needs to import additives. The Covid-19 outbreak has made it difficult to import additives from China, while the amount of stored materials is just enough for production until April.

The products of the enterprise include input materials of many key production fields.

Kim Chi 

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