Tourist demand for Tet holiday tours is low.

Never before have tour prices during the Lunar New Year holiday been offered by companies at such drastically reduced rates as this year.

Many tours are discounted by nearly 50% but still have few customers - Photo: Ngoc Thang

At Hanoi Redtour, most tours during the Tet holiday are heavily discounted. Some tours departing just before Tet are even reduced by 43-48%, such as the 6-day, 5-night trip to South Korea, which dropped from 25.9 million VND to 14.9 million VND. Tours departing after Tet are discounted less, ranging from 3-12%.

Vietrantour has also just launched a series of discounted tours, with a Taiwan tour departing on the 2nd day of Tet (Lunar New Year) reduced by 1 million VND to 21.9 million VND; and a South Korea tour departing on the 27th day of Tet is selling out fast at only 11.4 million VND. In addition, the company is also offering a discount of 200,000 - 1 million VND per person for groups of 4 or more.

At Hanoitourist, despite discounts, many tours still have vacancies. For example, the Taiwan tour (5 days, 4 nights) departing on the first day of Tet (Lunar New Year) has 15 spots left; the Hong Kong - Disneyland tour (4 days, 3 nights) has 25 spots left; the Russia tour (6 days, 5 nights) has 35 spots left; and the Cambodia tour departing from the 2nd to the 4th day of Tet (4 days, 3 nights) still has 25 spots left.

Not only are overseas tours discounted to stimulate demand, but according to representatives of travel companies, some domestic tours to destinations like Da Lat, Vung Tau, Nha Trang, and Phu Quoc are also experiencing sluggish sales, with few bookings due to excessively high domestic airfares.

The director of a travel company said that in previous years, tours were fully booked two weeks in advance, but this year sales are very slow, with half of the bookings unsold, especially for tours during and after Tet (Lunar New Year). The director revealed: “Prices have already been reduced to the maximum extent; we can’t lower them any further because airfare and service costs are high during Tet. If we still don’t get bookings, the company will have to cancel tours or persuade customers to reschedule because we can’t afford to incur losses.”

According to Mr. Nguyen Cong Hoan, Deputy Director of Hanoi Redtour, the sluggish Tet holiday tour market is a common situation for many travel companies at this time. “Some companies, especially smaller ones, had overly high expectations for growth during Tet, not proactively selling early but instead holding onto tours, waiting for prices to skyrocket at the last minute. Because the market is slow, our company would rather make a small profit than take the risk,” Mr. Hoan said.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/e-am-tour-du-lich-tet-185535912.htm