Ha Long Bay in the northern province of Quang Ninh is one of the top destinations chosen by many foreign tourists. (Photo: VNA)Almosttwo years since borders closed, Vietnam's tourism sector is ready to fullyopen, with no restrictions on flight frequency or destinations.
Buttour companies face stiff competition from other destinations in theregion who are well prepared and may have the advantage.
GloriaBui, Director of Asia Exotica Vietnam, told Vietnam News her company is rapidlyrecruiting staff and expanding offices, preparing new tourism products as wellas re-establishing contact with partners.
"Themost important thing is to train staff and send product information tocustomers," she said.
Shealso said that Asia Exotica Vietnam decided to reopen soon and invest in peoplefrom the beginning, although many local inbound travel companies are still veryhesitant.
"Ithink it is completely reasonable to fully open the doors to tourism and liftrestrictions related to the pandemic," she added.
"We prioritise investmentto expand from products and services to marketing to adapt to the newsituation. Also, we are willing to hire more staff than needed to make sure thecompany is ready for the upcoming orders. This also creates jobs and duringthis time and we can focus on training the employees carefully,”
Vietravelhas also prepared plans to welcome international tourists in 2022. It hascompleted product sets in accordance with the requirements of the pilotprogramme to welcome international tourists and the demand of customers fromSoutheast Asia, the Middle East, America and Europe. The company isstrengthening marketing campaigns to partners and customers in these markets.
“Inthe new normal situation, we have to be more flexible and innovative,” thecompany’s representative said, adding how they are focusing on increasingsafety by applying safety standards and procedures suitable for eachdestination, and strengthening search, survey and launch of new product sets.
Positive Signs
GloriaBui said that right after the announcement of the full opening, there were alot of pre-booked tours for this summer and autumn.
Currently,the top destinations chosen by Asia Exotica Vietnam’s customers are Ha Long, HoiAn, and Hanoi, followed by Hue, Ho Chi Minh City and Phu Quoc.
“Thereare a lot of early orders, for April and May, when Vietnam has just reopened.We are very excited about this and looking forward to welcoming tourists backsoon,” she said.
OxalisAdventure, the only company in Vietnam licenced to conduct anexpedition tour to Son Doong cave, Quang Binh province said that Son Doongtours in 2022 have been fully booked.
Frommid-January 2022, the tour company has continued to open the reservation systemfor Son Doong tours departing in 2023. Currently, the tour has been booked fornearly 15 per cent, of which the majority are foreigners.
Othertours of Oxalis such as Tu Lan, Hang Va, Hang En, Hang Tien have reached 80 percentof the booking rate until May 2022.
Inthe first two months of 2022, international visitors to Vietnam were estimatedat 49,200 arrivals, up 71.7 percent over the same period last year. Among them,visitors arriving by air accounted for 87.8 percent of international arrivalsto Vietnam.
Currently,the entire tourism sector is preparing necessary conditions to fully opentourism activities from March 15.
Thisyear, the tourism sector has set a target of serving 65 million visitors,including 5 million foreigners, and earning 440 trillion VND (nearly 19.3billion USD) in revenue./.
VNA
