Airfare prices increase, summer tourism worries

Confused about choosing a tour?

For many years now, Ms. D.TD, principal of a kindergarten in Kinh Mon town, has organized domestic tours for the school's staff and teachers during the summer. However, this year, up to this point, Ms. D. is still wondering where to choose to travel. "This year, the school's staff and teachers want to travel and visit Quy Nhon. However, after researching, I found that the round-trip airfare from Hanoi to Quy Nhon is over 4.2 million VND/person. Then there are the costs of food, accommodation, entertainment... Adding up, it's tens of millions of VND per person. When hearing this price, everyone is worried because it's too high," said Ms. D.

Mr. Tran Van Huy (in Hai Duong City) had planned to take his family to Phu Quoc this summer, but his family's plan may not come true. "Since last month, I have occasionally visited some websites to look for air tickets, but I always see that the cheapest round-trip economy class ticket is over 3 million VND/person, so I haven't been able to buy one yet," Mr. Huy shared.

Having been a travel agent for more than 5 years, Ms. Vu Ngoc Van Anh (in Hai Duong City) had to admit that it has never been as difficult to book tours as this year. “In previous years, by this time, my summer schedule was fully booked, including individual customers and group customers from agencies and businesses. This year, the number of customers booking domestic summer tours is less than 1/3 of previous years. The main reason is that the high airfare has caused tour and trip costs to increase significantly,” Ms. Van Anh said.

According to Ms. Hoang Thi Thuy, Director of Dong Chui Viet International Travel Company Limited, air tours are often associated with long-distance tours, with distances of 500 km or more. In recent years, these tours have accounted for the majority of the company's tourism products. This year, the number of customers looking for tours and services is similar to last year, but the rate of "final" customers is only about 50% compared to previous years because of the need to balance costs when airfares are adjusted to the ceiling.

Some agents and travel companies said that if they “hold” a large number of airline tickets, they will get good discounts from airlines, reducing tour prices. But because airfares are high this year, customers are not willing to buy tours, so they do not dare to “hold” tickets. Because if they buy them and no one goes, they will lose all the money for these tickets.

Redirect

Faced with rising airfares affecting travel costs, travel companies have made appropriate adjustments to ensure business operations and meet the needs of leisure and travel. Many people have also taken measures to cope with rising airfares.

While waiting to see if he could “hunt” for cheap airfare, Mr. Tran Van Huy proactively researched some tourist destinations in the northern mountainous provinces so that he could change direction to those locations. “I think Son La or Hoa Binh are quite good, there are many beautiful landscapes, easy to travel. Children can also explore and immerse themselves in nature. More importantly, the price is cheap. Sometimes staying here for a few days only costs as much as buying a plane ticket to Quy Nhon,” said Mr. Huy.

Ms. D.TD said that there is a possibility of organizing overseas trips for teachers because there are tours that are cheaper than domestic tours. “I researched and found that there is a 5-day, 4-night tour to Thailand that costs just over 8 million VND, the same price as a trip to Quy Nhon, so I am asking for opinions from staff and teachers. If most of them agree, we will choose to go on this tour,” Ms. D. said.

Instead of advising customers to take domestic tours by plane, Ms. Vu Ngoc Van Anh advises customers to take foreign tours such as Thailand, Korea or China with similar prices. There are even tours to China close to Vietnam, lasting 3 days and 2 nights, costing over 2 million VND.

According to Ms. Hoang Thi Thuy, to meet customer needs and build suitable tour costs, Dong Chui Viet International Travel Company Limited has built a number of tours by road, train, and air during off-peak hours such as: Da Nang, Hue, Saigon - Mui Ne...