About 50 travel agents and companies from delta provinces attended the function. May 17, delegates will visit Hai Phong’s Cat Ba tourist area to learn about ecological and home-stay tours in the province.

Mai Tien Dung, vice director of the Ha Noi Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said that the number of foreign tourists to Viet Nam and the Mekong Delta had decreased in the first quarter.

“The activity will contribute to developing Vietnamese tourism,” he said, “It also creates a chance for travel agents to exchange experiences and promote their products”.

Source: VNS

However, Mai said, she has been not really satisfactory about the quality of the tours. Though the tours were really economical, Mail felt uncomfortable with the accommodation and food services.

“I have followed a new way to look for discounted tours. I try to look for the opportunities on the websites of big travel firms. In general, the big firms offer the discount rates of 15-20 percent at maximum. However, you will feel satisfactory about the service you receive,” she said.

Mai Huong, an office worker, has noted that nowadays, people tend to become “smart tourists.” Huong and friends, for example, can save much money by designing and organizing tours themselves. They try to “hunt” for low-cost train and air tickets, call hotels to book rooms 5-7 days in advance in order to enjoy the best hotel room rates.

Especially, they try to not use the expensive local services, if possible. For example, they bring with themselves fast food, drinks, cookers, bowls and chopsticks.

“By doing this, we can control our spending, take initiative with our itineraries. Especially, the trips are wonderful, because we can discover things ourselves,” Huong said.

The Viet, a student in Hanoi, also said he likes traveling by himself, because he can decide where to go and when. “If you are a member of a group of tourists, you will have to follow the fixed schedules,” he explained.

“Booking rooms proves to be the most difficult thing for you when you organize tours yourself,” he said. “The hotel room rate tends to increase on holidays or peak days. Therefore, you would have to spend big money on accommodations if you forget to book rooms many days in advance.”

“In general, young people nowadays like traveling by themselves, even if they are in good financial capability,” he noted.

“Phuot” – the choice of the youth

The term “phuot” has become so popular among the youth, which is means traveling on motorbikes to discover the country.

“Du lich bui” is the term with similar meaning, which means trekking, opting for backpacking tourism, self-designed and low-cost tourism with four ‘nos’: no tour, no guide, no bus and no hotel.

Phuot’s and du lich bui’s biggest advantage is that they allow young people to travel as they dream, while the costs are cheap enough to fit their limited financial capability. The phuot travelers are adventurers and explorers.

Especially, phuot and du lich bui have been chosen by young travelers because they can reach out to the newly discovered or “neglected” land. Thien Truong beach in Nam Dinh province, Tinh Gia in Thanh Hoa and Quan Lan in Quang Ninh provinces are the most favored destinations for the youth nowadays. For those, who like the forest and mountain landscapes and want to learn more about the lives of the ethnic minorities, would go to Hoa Binh, Thai Nguyen and Ha Giang – the mountainous provinces in the north.

Source: Vietnamnet

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.

Source: PL TPHCM

A wide variety of cultural activities and traditional folk games such as lion and dragon dancing, playing underwater and human chess, wrestling and a tug-of-war competition are also to be staged during the six-day festival.

A Chau Van (spiritual) singing competition will also be held at the Van Cat and Tien Huong temple during the festival. Chau Van (spiritual) rites of Nam Dinh province have been recognised as a National Intangible Cultural Heritage.

The Phu Day festival is held annually to commemorate Mother Goddess Lieu Hanh who is one of the four immortals in Vietnamese folklore.

The festival is part of Nam Dinh province’s scheduled events held in response to the Vietnam National Tourism Year of Red River Delta 2013 programme, which aims to preserve and promote the Vietnamese Mother Goddess worship culture in particular and spiritual cultural values in general.

Source: Nhandan online

Malaysia also does not require visas for the citizens from 155 countries and territories. Indonesia grants visas right at the border gates to the citizens from 24 countries.

Thailand has been applying the visa waver for the travelers from 55 countries. Especially, it unilaterally waivers visas for the travelers from 32 countries which are the most important markets for the country. It grants visas to the citizens from the other 28 countries right at the 24 air, land and waterways border gates.

Vietnam has also been applying the visa waver policy over the last many years in an effort to attract more tourists.

However, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Nguyen Thanh Son, when reviewing the policy implementation, said it did not help much in attracting tourists.

According to Son, Vietnam loses $50 million a year when unilaterally wavering visas for the citizens from 7 countries, including Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Russia and Finland.

However, he said on Tuoi tre that the number of foreign tourists has been increasing over the last 5-7 years, but inconsiderably. The additional income brought by the increase in the number of tourists proves to “make nothing” if compared with the sum of money lost because of the visa waver policy.

Commenting about Son’s remarks, Nguyen Huu Tho, Chair of the Vietnam Travel Association, said the conclusion is unreasonable.

He said that only those who stay in Vietnam for no more than 15 days can enjoy the visa waiver, which means that not all the people entering Vietnam from the 7 countries counted on by Son, could enjoy the policy.

Every foreign traveler spends $105.4 dollars on average, according to the General Statistics Office, and stays in Vietnam for 7-8 days, according to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, the total spending of the 5,573,000 travelers who enjoyed the visa wavering during their stay in Vietnam in July 2004 – June 2012 had reached $4.6 billion.

The spending by foreign tourists has helped stimulate many industries in Vietnam which make tourism-relating products, create more jobs and reduce poverty.

La Quoc Khanh, Deputy Director of the HCM City Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, has warned that if Vietnam raises the visa fee from $25 to $45 and stop the visa wavering for the citizens from 7 countries, it would “kill the goose that lays golden eggs.”

“It would get $20 more from every tourist, but it would lose big sources of travelers for the Vietnamese tourism industry,” Khanh said.