As many people are preparing to travel for Tet, many travel firms complain that they are missing big business opportunities because they are unable to satisfy the demand.

The 2011 New Year holiday will be a long eight days which promises big business opportunities for travel agencies because people  are likely to take full advantage of the long holiday to travel far away from home. A lot of people have been trying to contact travel firms to book tours, but they have been told that travel firms  cannot accept any more bookings. The problem lies in the fact that travel firms were not previously aware of the scheduled Tet holiday, and were not prepared for serving such a high number of travellers.

Under the current Labor Code, employees can have four days off for Tet, December 30th of the old lunar year (the day just before the New Year), and the first three days of the new year. However, in many years, the four days off are followed by Saturday and Sunday, therefore, Tet seems to last longer. Moreover, the government has decided that employees will have two more days off for Tet, provided that they work on the Saturday and Sunday the week before Tet. As such, people will have eight consecutive days off.

However, the Tet holiday schedule was only recently announced by the government and travel firms are unable to react quickly to the announcement. They were not prepared to serve many clients this year because they thought the holiday would be not long enough for far trips.

Nguyen The Khai, Director of Hoan My Travel Firm, said that his firm has stopped accepting new bookings since January 1, 2011, but a lot of people still have contacted him over the last week to book tour for Tet. Khai said that he has to refuse the clients, because the company has also prepared air tickets, hotel rooms, restaurants and other services for about 2500 travellers this Tet.

“Every day, about 20-30 clients come to ask for booking tours, but we do not have more tours to sell. It is a real pity but we have no other choice. If we had known the Tet holiday schedule earlier, we would have been prepared more business opportunities,” Khai told Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon on January 12.

At Fiditourist, the preparation for serving 20,000 travellers on Tet holiday (an increase of 20 percent in comparison with the previous year) was kicked off several months ago. A representative of Fiditour also said that many clients come to book tours these days, but the firm does not dare to accept deposit money from clients. “We just promise to contact the clients later, while we try to look for services,” he said.

“We did not anticipate that the number of tourists would increase so sharply, so were not prepared to serve them,” said Dang Trung Nghia, Deputy Director of Fiditour.

“In general, we have to prepare to serve travellers for several months in advance. Therefore, the tardy announcement about the Tet holiday schedule makes us unable to contrive,” he explained.

According to him, it is impossible to look for air tickets for flights abroad. Meanwhile, as for domestic tours, it will be difficult to find both flights and hotel rooms. In fact, there are still seats available for tours to the north. However, local residents in the south who have heard about the chilling cold weather in Hanoi, hesitate to go to Hanoi.

As for the tours on Tet, very few travellers depart before Tet. In general, they spend the first two days at home with family members and only depart on the third day of the lunar new year. However, there are many people, who want to go travelling before Tet and return home on the new year. It is regrettable that travel firms do not have the chance to serve the clients.

“If only the government had announced the Tet holiday schedule six months ago, travel firms would have more business opportunities. We could have designed some tours for the travellers who wanted to depart before Tet,” said Luu Dinh Phuc, Director of Viettour. “Now we don’t have no other choice than sitting and watching the opportunities pass by”.

Like other travel firms, Saigontourist also regrets knowing the Tet holiday schedule too late. On the day when the schedule was announced, Saigontourist launched 50 tours with the departure time before Tet. To date, the firm has received the booking from eight groups of tourists with 30-65 travellers for each group. 15,000 travellers have bought tours for Tet at Saigontourist. This only includes the clients who have paid, and if counting the clients who have reserved seats, the number would be higher.

Currently the firm reportedly only has some seats available for tours to Phan Thiet, Nha Trang, Da Lat (by land) and some tours to the north – Hanoi, Ha Long, Ninh Binh and Sa pa (by air). The seats for outbound tours are rare. Only some 10 seats are unoccupied for the tours to the Philippines which will depart on the first day of the New Year, seven seats for the tour to Singapore which will depart on the new year’s eve and 15 seats for the tour to Singapore-Malaysia which will depart on the fifth day of the new year.

Source: Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon

(Collected by Vietnam hotel)