Positive signals from the hotel
According to statistics from the travel platform Mustgo, some famous tourist destinations such as Sa Pa, Quang Ninh, Hoi An, and Phu Quoc recorded good occupancy rates. In particular, many hotels and resorts in Hoi An and Phu Quoc were fully booked, mostly thanks to international visitors.
During Tet, tourists tend to move north to mountainous destinations.
In Sa Pa - one of the localities with a positive forecast for the Lunar New Year tourist season, hotel capacity can change a lot on days close to the holiday, because Vietnamese guests tend to book rooms at the last minute.
Particularly in Quang Ninh , while hotel rooms are about 20-30% full depending on the segment, cruise ship capacity is about 80%, showing that the demand for beach vacations during Lunar New Year is still high.
Meanwhile, hotels in the Central region and beyond such as Da Nang, Quy Nhon, Nha Trang, Phan Thiet, etc. still have many vacant rooms. Many units in Da Nang, Quy Nhon, etc. have to run big promotional programs for early bookings, remove surcharges, etc. to stimulate demand, but the number of room booking requests is still not high.
Mustgo representative said that hotel room occupancy in Phu Quoc reached an average of 80% at 3- and 4-star hotels. Similar to the New Year holiday, in the first quarter of 2024, the pearl island continuously welcomed charter flights carrying international passengers, so the room occupancy rate increased.
Attract customers with products
Speaking to Lao Dong, Mr. Nguyen Cong Hoan - General Director of Flamingo Redtours - said that international visitors to Vietnam have a more limited length of stay and spending compared to before the pandemic, and the trend of choosing independent travel is increasing. While service providers are still facing many difficulties, the recovery rate is good but the quality is not stable.
Therefore, businesses must prepare new, flexible products, continuously introducing new, different, and attractive elements for each journey. In addition, they must exploit diverse markets, expand markets, and identify niche markets.
Not only the inbound market, the domestic and outbound tourism markets will also have certain difficulties in the context of the gloomy economy, Mr. Nguyen Van Hieu - General Director of Vitamin Tours - assessed that tourism spending will certainly be tighter in 2024.
Responding flexibly to market fluctuations and trends, this business offers low-cost packages under 5 million or under 10 million to stimulate tourism. A prominent destination attracting Vietnamese tourists during the Lunar New Year travel season is China, when tours are almost fully booked.
“That shows that the tourism demand of Northern tourists is still very high. During the festival season, we do not focus on day tours but on 2-day-1-night tours, so we will build a 2-day-1-night package with reasonable prices but high quality, still using 4-5 star services,” said Mr. Hieu.
With a longer-term strategy for the summer and the whole of 2024, the company has booked many international flights in China such as to Jiuzhaigou, Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou... or Korea, Japan, Dubai, Singapore, Malaysia. These are predicted to be markets that continue to attract the attention of Vietnamese customers.
“In particular, with the difficult economic situation, the service value of domestic tours is very high, so we predict that 2024 will still be a boom for international tourism,” said a representative of this business.
International arrivals to Vietnam in January 2024 reached over 1.5 million, according to the General Statistics Office. The number of visitors increased by 10.3% compared to the previous month and increased by 73.6% compared to the same period in 2023. This growth rate is the highest since Vietnam reopened tourism from March 2022, equivalent to the number of international visitors to Vietnam in January 2019 before the pandemic. The number of visitors arriving by air reached 1.29 million, up 10.2% over the same period in 2019; the number of visitors arriving by sea reached 48,300, double that of the same period in 2019. Meanwhile, the number of visitors by road only reached 60% compared to the same period in 2019. This shows that air and sea connectivity has recovered strongly.
In terms of market size, South Korea continued to be the largest market sending visitors in January with 418,000 arrivals - accounting for 27.6%. China ranked second, reaching 242,000 arrivals, Taiwan (China) ranked third with 84,000 arrivals, and the US ranked fourth with 76,000 arrivals.
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