Travel firms design new tours to avoid crisis

Published: 17:58 Wednesday - April 17, 2013

Previously, the domestic tours provided by travel firms were rather like each other. The firms did not compete in the originalities of the tours and the itineraries, but in the tour fees. Therefore, they reduced the tour fees continuously to attract more travelers.

However, the tour fee reduction proves to be ineffective any longer. Despite the repeated tourism promotion campaigns, Vietnamese still keep indifferent to domestic tours.

Travel firms, which have realized where the problem is, have advertised a lot of a new destination points for the April holiday. Memento tourist site, I-resort hot spring in the sea city of Nha Trang have been put into operation.

The travelers to Da Lat City would be brought to the Cu Lan village, far from the city, called a hidden location, therefore, which travel firms rarely brought tourists to in the past.

In the south, the Cao Minh tourist site, developed by singer Cao Minh in Dong Nai province, has attracted the attention of travel firms. The tourist site was initially set up by the singer as a farm where his family members could spend time on weekend. However, Minh has later developed it into a famous tourist site with modern facilities and amusement services.

A senior executive of Lua Viet travel firm said discovering new destinations and designing new tours has been on the firm’s focus. Lua Viet tends to develop the tours to the central region this year, because it believes that there are great potentials which have not been awaken by travel firms.

Small travel firms have also been trying to renew their tours or renovating the itineraries to make the tours more attractive in the eyes of tourists. Nguyen Ngoc Thu from Bi Tour said she has decided to launch “humanitarian tours.”

In general, tours would become uninspiring after some years of exploitation; therefore, redesigning tours is a must for travel firms.

“Going traveling and making new friends, planting trees or discovering new places could be the ideas which may catch the travelers’ interests,” Thu said.

Bi Tour has organized many humanitarian tours targeting different groups of clients, from families, friends and singles who have the demand to make friends. In general, offline meetings would be held right before every tour, where clients meet each other with the participation of psychological experts.

Not only travel firms, local authorities themselves have also been trying to open new tourism routes as well. Da Nang City, for example, has developed a new tour to Son Tra peninsula. It has built two floating huts in the Bai Nom area to serve the travelers who like fishing.

In Da Lat City, the tours to highland craft villages have been introduced. Besides, tourists can also visit high technology agricultural production areas in the city, relax at the Dam Rong hot spring, or join the adventure tours to the Cat Tien National Park.

Truong Hoang Phuong, MA, Product and Marketing Director of Vietmark, said Vietmark has decided to renew the short distance tours to Tien Giang, Dong Nai and Da Lat.

The names seem to be too familiar to many travelers, but they would still find it interesting to go there under the renewed tours.