2008 summer travel: luxury tours attract tourists

Travel companies have launched many summer tours to meet the increasing travel demand. At present, many tours are fully reserved from now to July.

Abundant tour program

Among foreign travel tours, Thailand is always the top choice because of the cheap tour price of 280 USD a person if traveling by low-cost airline otherwise 380 USD a person. Tours to Singapore and Malaysia follow at 450-600 USD a person.

Lengthy tours to China are costly, thus domestic travel companies are dividing into smaller tours such as Hanoi – Nan Ning, Hanoi – Kun Ming – Shi Lin, Hanoi – Guang Zhou costing from 100 to 400 USD a person, attracting many tourists. Moreover, many people are eager to travel to China to see the modern architectural projects for the 2008 Olympic Beijing.

Mr. Tran Thanh Cong, Deputy Director of Hanoitourist, said that luxury tours to the Republic of Korea (RoK) and Japan draw much attention from tourists in spite of high prices of 1,000 to 2,000 USD a person.

For domestic tourist attractions, the Central and Southern provinces are popular choices of tourists. Luxury resorts from Quang Binh to Nha Trang and Phu Quoc are always full.

A new travel tendency favored this year is travel by five-star cruise ship with many high-end services. Ms Nguyen Bich Thuy from Smile Travel Company said the number of tourists surged in the end of May when pupils were out of school for summer vacation.

Lacking new tours

Travel companies have not launched new tours yet. Tour programs usually resemble each other. To solve the problem, tourists often organize tours by themselves to destinations in Laos and Cambodia.

However, Ms Thuy noted that to establish a new tour product is very difficult, because surveying is not easy. Thus, to meet the demand of tourists, many travel companies operate open tours with chosen routes. And visa free travel for Vietnam is also the reason why tourists choose Asean countries as their favorite destinations.

Translated from Lao Dong Newspaper