After a quiet June, the number of domestic travellers keeps increasingin July. Islands, tourism sites and beautiful beaches these days receivemore travellers who want to relax on brine.

Choosing nearby beaches

In Long Bien district in Hanoi, many 30-40 seat coaches are presentearly in the morning of Saturdays and Sundays, which come to pick uptravellers to beaches. Two weeks ago, local residents were eager toregister trips to Cua Lo, Tuan Chau, Ha Long and Sam Son beaches. Agroup of coevals left for Cua Lo last week. Meanwhile, NA, a companylocated in the district, organised a tour for its staff to Van Don-QuanLan.

In order to save money, northern travellers choose nearby beaches to go relaxing.

According to Nguyen Cong Hoan, Deputy Director of Hanoi Redtours, thenumber of travellers witnesses a boom in July. The number of registeredtours to the central region and the south has increased by 50 percent.Especially, people now favour the tours to Nha Trang and Danang, thanksto many choices with airlines and high quality of services. Meanwhile,those travellers, who choose to travel to the north, regularly registerthe tours to Quang Binh, Hue and Lang Co.

Tran The Dung, Deputy Director of HCM City-based The He Tre travelfirm, said that not many people travelled in June, because theirchildren had to take high school final exams and prepare for theuniversity entrance exams. Therefore, the trips have been delayed untilJuly.

Dung has reported a 20 percent increase in the number of travellersin July in comparison with the same period of the last year. Meanwhile,Vietravel hopes that it will serve 125,000 travellers in 2011’s summer,an increase of 25 percent over the same period of the last year.

The tours to beaches remain the most favourite tours for travellers.However, they tend to go to nearby beaches this summer instead of goingfarer in order to save money. Travellers in HCM City take short distancetours to Vung Tau, Phan Thiet or Ninh Chu.

The national flag air carrier Vietnam Airlines has reported that thedomestic aviation market in the first six months of the year, witnessed a20 percent growth rate in comparison with the same period of the lastyear. Airlines have all provided more flights to serve the increasingnumber of tourists. The flights to Da Lat, Phu Quoc, Hai Phong and HueCity have seen the number of passengers up by 30-40 percent.

Con Dao, Phu Quoc islands attract northern travellers

Con Dao and Phu Quoc are now not the choice of southern travellersany more, because of the high tour fees (the lowest rate is 4.5 milliondong per traveller for 3-day-and-2-night tour). Meanwhile, the twolocalities have become the choice of more and more northern travellers,especially when direct flights from Hanoi to Phu Quoc have beenlaunched. Besides, there are also the flights from Can Tho to theisland.

The tours to Phu Quoc island (travellers can take directly flightswith Air Mekong), including the ones provided by Vietravel (9.8 milliondong per traveller for 4-day-and-3-night tour, 4-star resort), by HanoiRedtours (7.9-8.5 million dong for 4-day-and-3-night tour, 3-starresort) have been selling very well.

With direct flights, travellers, instead of transiting in HCM Cityand wasting three hours at the HCM City airport, can go directly to PhuQuoc, where they have lunches and walk on Sao beach with white sand andblue sea water.

Nguyen Duy Quang, a business officer of Air Mekong has revealed thatthe direct flights from Hanoi to Phu Quoc always have the occupied seatpercentage at 90-95 percent. In the three months of 2010’s summer, theairline only served 100 passengers who flew from Hanoi to Phu Quoc,while the number of passengers is expected to reach 400 in June-Augustof 2011.

Meanwhile, Dung from The He Tre said the number of southerntravellers to the islands has decreased. In previous years, the firmserved 600-700 travellers, while the number is thought to drop to300-400.