Hotel room clearance 4/30

Companies and travel agents are selling off unsold rooms from the April 30 holiday at prices 300,000 to 600,000 VND cheaper than at the beginning of the month.

In recent days, forums for buying and selling rooms have started posting many posts about "Loan clearance sale for April 30th". The most popular locations for clearance sale are Cat Ba ( Hai Phong ), Ha Long (Quang Ninh), Phu Quoc (Kien Giang). The discount depends on each facility and seller, ranging from 300,000 to 600,000 VND compared to nearly a month ago.

According to VnExpress , in early April, a company advertised 25 rooms on the Emeraude cruise ship in Ha Long Bay for sale at nearly VND2.8 million per person. The price is now VND2.4 million and two days before the holiday, there were four extra rooms. Some units also lowered the price of 4-star hotels such as Ha Long Palace (Ha Long) from VND1.7 million per night to VND1.5 million. The Bay View room class of Sol By Wyndham Ha Long was once advertised at VND2.3 million, but by the morning of April 28, the price was adjusted to VND1.9 million.

Seashell Phu Quoc was offered for sale at VND2.2 million per night at the end of March, now it is priced at VND1.6 million. At the end of February, a 2-bedroom ocean view apartment at InterContinental Phu Quoc Long Beach Resort was priced at VND7.9 million for the period from April 29 to May 2, but by April 26, the price was VND4.8 million.

At Flamingo Cat Ba, there are still vacant rooms, so the "holding" parties have proactively lowered the price. On April 5, a sales staff of a company based in Thanh Xuan (Hanoi) offered a Deluxe mountain view room for 4 million VND for the night of April 29 to May 1. By April 24, the price was 3.7 million VND and by April 27, it was further reduced to 3.5 million VND.

A resort in Phu Quoc. Photo: Booking. — A resort in Phu Quoc. Photo: *Booking*

"Holding rooms" is a concept used a lot in tourism. Usually, companies and agents will hold a certain number of rooms before a big holiday. Because they hold them early, the price will be cheap. In case they sell out, they will earn a profit based on the difference. Otherwise, they have to sell them to avoid losing all their money. In addition to "holding rooms", tourism businesses also "hold airline tickets" in a similar way. If they cannot sell them, they have to accept a loss or lose everything.

According to most companies, selling rooms close to holidays like April 30 is not uncommon because every company, more or less, "holds" a certain number of rooms. However, compared to last year, the situation of reserving rooms for April 30 this year is not bustling.

"Because the parties proactively kept fewer rooms, we were able to 'return to shore' more safely than last year," said Ms. Hoang Tuyet, Director of Top One Travel.

Ms. Tuyet said that if they only rely on last year's situation, travel agents may misjudge the market. Last year, tourism had just opened, with limited destinations, but this year the situation is very different. In addition, high airfares continued until close to the holiday, and the number of domestic tourists was no longer as high as in pre-pandemic years. Therefore, any unit with a large room fund, this year "may still have bad sales even if they lose money".

A representative of a travel agency based in Hoan Kiem District, Hanoi also confirmed that last year many parties "died because of holding on to rooms", so this situation has decreased significantly this year. This company used to hold about 3,000 rooms in hot destinations, but this year only dared to import about 1,000.

Mr. Vu Tien Van, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Adavigo Company, which specializes in hotel rooms and airline tickets, said that he only bought a small number of rooms for reserve. Compared to last year's April 30, the company's domestic room inventory was only about 40%. Every year, companies have to keep many rooms to ensure sales on April 30. This year, "holding" many rooms is unnecessary because hotels in major tourist destinations such as Phu Quoc and Nha Trang are still empty despite the surcharge being removed.

"This year, we don't need to import a lot of rooms to sell. There is no reason to invest in holding rooms. In addition to capital stagnation, if they don't sell all of them, the companies that have held rooms will also be fined," said Mr. Van.

Mr. Van said that two months ago, he had assessed that the domestic tourism situation was not optimistic. There were two bases for this conclusion. First, domestic airfares are still high. Second, Vietnamese people are no longer restricted from international destinations. Countries in the region have fully reopened with competitive tour prices. Therefore, Vietnamese tourists will not be interested in domestic tourism. Meanwhile, foreign tourists also do not come to Vietnam because airfares are expensive, greatly affecting the cost of the whole trip. Therefore, the company is also more "shy" in preparing room funds for the occasion of April 30.

Similarly, Mr. Bui Thanh Tu, Marketing Director of Best Price, also commented that the room clearance situation this year is less exciting than previous years. According to Mr. Tu's observations in the travel business's buying and selling groups, the room clearance is mainly due to customers canceling or not being able to travel. The situation of "crashing the floor" in series is rare and this was predicted.

Tu Nguyen

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