South Korean, Chinese travel firms offer unlicensed packages in Vietnam’s Da Nang

If you run into a group of South Korean or Chinese tourists in the central city of Da Nang, accompanied by a Vietnamese tour guide who does not speak throughout the trip, chances are they are customers of an unlicensed travel firm.

Despite having no permit, multiple tour organizers in China and South Korea are bringing tourists to Da Nang and hiring local tour guides to deal with authorities rather than to assist the holidaymakers.

According to current regulations, foreign travel firms must satisfy two requirements by both working with Vietnamese travel firms and by using local tour guides when they want to bring tourists into the country.

However it seems much simpler to only work with local tour guides than to find an official travel partner on top of this.

Typically, Vietnamese tour guides are paid to accompany unlicensed tour groups and are put in charge of buying tickets, while the introductory tasks are done by the Chinese or South Korean tour leaders.

Last week, for example a 45-seater bus operated by Lotte Tour, with a South Korean tour guide named Kim Sung Young, arrived at the Ngu Hanh Son tourist area, and a young Vietnamese woman stepped down to buy the tickets.

She was then followed by nearly 20 South Korean tourists around the attraction, but hardly spoke at all as it was Kim who was tasked with actually guiding them.

The group of tourists later left for Hoi An, the famous old quarter in the neighboring province of Quang Nam, before returning to a hotel by Da Nang’s iconic Han River.

The Vietnamese tour guide remained silent throughout the itinerary, and later revealed that she only speaks English and was hired to help the South Korean tour organizer just in case they were confronted by authorities.

This is in fact a trick Lotte Tour uses to avoid problems with local authorities.

The company sells the Da Nang packages online and has its own South Korean tour guides ready to receive the guests and take them to local attractions.

In a recent case observed by Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reporters, a South Korean man took more than a dozen compatriots to explore the Tam Thai Pagoda in Da Nang.

When he saw that the Tuoi Tre reporters were about to take a photo of him, the foreign tour guide covered his face with his cap and turned to face a different direction.

The correspondents also witnessed a passenger bus carrying South Korean tourists to the pagoda, where the Vietnamese tour guide ‘transferred’ all of the guests to the real tour guide, a South Korean man, after purchasing entrance tickets.

Huynh Duc Trung, head of the travel management division under the Da Nang Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, confirmed to Tuoi Tre that Lotte Tour is not licensed to bring South Korean tourists to the city.

Therefore every activity of the company here is in breach of the rules, he said.

Many Chinese travel firms employ the same trick to illegally bring tourists to Da Nang.

“These companies sell Da Nang trips as casino-travel packages on the Taobao website even though they do not have a permit,” N., who works for a five-star Chinese-owned hotel, revealed.

When tourists arrive, they are received and taken to hotels by Chinese people, N. said.

“They usually hire local Chinese-speaking tour guides to take the tourists around, and even I was hired occasionally, although I am not a tour guide,” she admitted.

There are also Chinese nationals who have Vietnamese wives, or local residents, set up travel firms on their behalf, then sell Da Nang packages to tourists in China without a permit.

A Chinese man was recently deported after authorities found out that the company he had registered under his Vietnamese wife’s name had illegally taken Chinese tourists to the city, according to the municipal immigration department.

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