Dao Loan
Foreign tourists buy souvenirs at a shop in HCMC – PHOTO: DAO LOAN
Director of Viking Travel Company Tran Xuan Hung said a weaker dong would rattle tour operators as they found it difficult to cope with such a sudden change. He bemoaned the company had lost VND10 million for a contract arranging a six-day trip for 20 tourists to Hong Kong due to the dong fall. This is because his firm now has to spend more buying the same sum of dollars to pay for tourism services in Hong Kong.
Hung said the company would keep a close watch on exchange rate fluctuations and report price updates of outbound tours to customers.
However, Hung and the directors of several other tour companies remain hesitant to announce new tour prices. Some firms have made a compromise by slightly increasing tour prices and at the same time reducing profit margins to stay competitive.
Many tour operators said that the rate hike is unlikely to help them improve competitiveness in attracting international tourists.
Hung said that to a certain extent, the Vietnamese currency devaluation would help lower inbound tour prices and encourage international tourists to spend more in Vietnam.
General director of Saigontourist Travel Service Company Vo Anh Tai said this could relatively increase the competitiveness of tours to Vietnam but if regional countries devalue their currencies as well, this advantage would disappear. In reality, except for the Singapore dollar, the currencies of many other regional countries have dipped significantly against the dollar.
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