The Lunar New Year holiday, which lasts from February 8 to 14, offers people a wide range of travel options.
Observations Monday, third day of Tetshowed that some northeastern tourist destinations have not attracted many visitors, prompting sellers to offer discounted rooms to accommodate more customers and reduce losses, especially with high-end tourism products .
Hoang Minh, owner of a company specializing in domestic travel services, currently has a large inventory of cruise slots in Ha Long Bay that need to be filled urgently.
He still has 34 seats available on a 5-star cruise operating on time on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so he has reduced the price to only about 1.5 million VND (US$61) per seat.
Besides cruises, it also has a large number of rooms in several resorts and hotels. Minh thinks that if he can’t sell all the remaining rooms soon, he will incur significant losses this holiday. The reduced prices began to take effect on Sunday afternoon, with prices approximately 20-25% lower than usual.
Dinh Thi Thu Thao, commercial director of Mustgo, a booking platform with 2,000 partner hotels nationwide, said the availability of cruise rooms during Tet “It depends on marketing capabilities to international tourists.” If done right, some cruises can be fully booked.
Pham Ha, chairman of tour operator Lux Group, said two of his cruises, Emperor Cruises Ha Long and Emperor Cruises Nha Trang, were 90% booked for the holiday. However, another Lux Group cruise, named Heritage Cruises, was scheduled to take a break until Tuesday.
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Foreign tourists experience making banh chung (Vietnamese sticky rice cake) and viewing Hang Trong paintings on Emperor Cruises Ha Long, February 11, 2024. Photo by Pham Ha |
Mustgo recorded a lower-than-average number of customers booking rooms in the northern province of Quang Ninh, of which Ha Long is the prime provincial city, during the month. Tet.
Hotels from 3 stars had an occupancy rate of 30 to 40%. Cruise products have been more popular, reaching an occupancy rate of over 80%.
Slow sales also occurred in some homestays and villas in suburban Hanoi, which were almost empty during the holidays.
Le Thi Thu Thuy, owner of the Anbooking system, a unit managing more than 50 villas and homestays in the Hanoi suburbs, said the occupancy rate of the entire system only reached about 20 to 30 %.
Bungalows for two or three people were more popular, while larger villas for groups of more than 10 people “had very few guests.”
She said she hoped occupancy rates could be improved when companies held networking evenings before returning to work.
An Anbooking representative explained that long vacations lead tourists to travel to more distant destinations instead of renting nearby villas to relax. Thus, the northern mountainous areas or provinces in the central region will receive a considerable number of guests from Hanoi compared to the outskirts of the capital.
