In order to boost demand, a lot of travel enterprises are launching special discount and promotion programmes to draw their customers’ interest.
Some travel enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City shared that since the beginning of the year, there has been a decrease of 20 percent in the number of customers against that of the same period last year. Other enterprises have even witnessed a larger reduction. Therefore, lowering tour price in order to stimulate demand is currently a solution being considered by almost all enterprises.
In fact, this year customers tend to opt to self-organised tours or tours sold at a cheap or discount rate by travel enterprises instead of luxurious ones. Fully aware of customers’ psychology, a lot of enterprises have collaborated with their partners to seek solutions to reducing tour price while guaranteeing service quality.
Right in early 2012 summer, Vietrantour introduced the discount programme for customers purchasing domestic and international tours between June 15 and July 15. In addition to the programme at a discount rate of up to 40 percent for domestic air travel tours, Vietrantour has just kicked off its programme to reduce price for all of its tours on the 10th foundation anniversary of the company. Accordingly, all the tours departing from Hanoi between June 15 and July 15 are entitled to a reduction of VND100,000-10 million (US$5-500). This tour operator also affirmed that reduced prices do not affect quality provided.
Some other large tour operators including Saigontourist, Fiditour, Vietravel, and Golden tour, etc. also offer attractive discounts. Vietravel offers a discount of 35 percent for a number of tours. Particularly, this company introduces shocking tours whose prices are 45 percent lower than usual. Saigontourist still maintains their discount programmes (38 percent) and reduces prices of air travel tours departing from Hanoi and Saigon. Customers nationwide joining the special programme of the company from 15 May to 12 August will have the opportunity to win a prize of up to VND300 million (US$15,000) via Saigontourist Travel Voucher.
Ms Nguyen Thi Tuyet Mai, PR and Communications Director of Fiditour, has decided to have profit reduced and cooperate with its partners with a view to having the best tour price for customers. After one month implementing its super promotional programmes for summer 2012 (from 1 June 2012), 148 tours were organised in June. The number of customers registering for tours in July and August has started to soar. There have been 4,361 customers booking for tours in July.
Besides lowering tour price, travel enterprises have added new destinations to their traditional tours and opened new and unique routes to attract tourists.
Vietnamese
