Summer vacation: high-grade tours favoured

Summer vacation: high-grade tours favoured

High-class tourism products have become quite popular in Vietnam. Tours to local luxurious resorts and villas and foreign tours are more and more attractive to Vietnamese people.

In the first five months of 2007, there were nearly 1,000 Vietnamese people bought tours to four-star resorts and hotels, up 35% year on year, according to the Hanoi Travel Company. The firm expects to attract around 700 to 1,000 visitors of this kind in June and July.

According to local travel companies, it is a good sign for travel firms as more Vietnamese are buying high-class tours because this kind of tourists have high level of spending (over VND500,000/person/day) and often buy long tours of 4-5 days.

Foreign tours are also the choice of many Vietnamese tourists this year. According to the Vinatour International Tourism and Trade Joint Stock Company, the most attractive foreign tours to Vietnamese travelers are tourism-shopping tours to Singapore, Malaysia, China and Hong Kong. The number of visitors to Hong Kong and China soared early this year, three times more than the same period of 2006.

The HCM City Department of Tourism reported more than 300,000 Vietnamese visitors going abroad in the past five months, up by 30% year on year. Some 50,000 people registered for foreign tours in May only, mainly tours to China, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. Tours to Europe, the US, North, the Republic of Korea, and Egypt are also selected by many visitors.

Along with the increasing need for high-class tours, provinces and cities in Vietnam have focused on developing high-class tourism products on a large scale.

For example, the northern province of Ha Tay has begun to implement large-scale tourism projects to realise its goal to become a centre of tourism in the north.

Specifically, the construction of a resort with 36-hole golf course worth US$22 million will be kicked off in Chuong My district this third quarter by the DK ENC Company from the Republic of Korea. Another $200 million project to upgrade the tourism site at King Pond Bang Ta Tan Vien valley has been licenced while a $97 million project to build a golf course, high-grade apartment blocks, a five-star hotel, an entertainment zone and a shopping mall is planned. Ha Tay officials said that some investors from Japan and Australia want to participate in this project.

Along with designing the tourism development plan for the Ba Vi National Park, Ha Tay province has kicked off the An Khanh ecological tourist site project worth VND343 billion (US$21.43 million). The province also develops new tours to famous pagodas like Huong Pagoda, Thay Pagoda, Dau Pagoda, Tay Phuong pagoda and to craft villages like Phu Vinh bamboo rattan village in Chuong My district, Chuyen My mother-of-pearl inlaying village in Phu Xuyen district and Son Dong statue in Hoai Duc district.

In the central province of Quang Ngai, the local administration has granted an investment licence to the Qudos Hoian Company Limited to build the high-class Qudos Hoi An tourist site in Cam An ward, Hoi An town with total investment of $18 million. The project will complete after 33 months.