A travel firm in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong had managed to offer unlicensed adventure games for a decade without the knowledge of local authorities until a crackdown on Thursday.
The Mao Hiem Viet Co. run adventure activities that included a zip line, a monkey bridge, a leap of faith from two spots in Tuyen Lam Lake, and another site at Golden Valley. Both sites are popular tourism areas in the provincial capital of Da Lat.
The zip line allows tourists to cross the lake while hanging from a 100 meter long cable suspended over the water, while the monkey bridge challenges people to walk between two pine trees on only a small bar. The leap of faith is a cliff jump into the lake.
The company was asked to close all three sites following an inspection by the Lam Dong tourism department on Thursday.
The inspection came in the wake of four foreign tourists dying in two separate accidents during adventure tours in Da Lat last week.
On February 26, three British tourists were swept down the Datanla waterfall during a trekking tour, while a Belarusian vacationer was found dead downstream from the Pongour cascade two days later.
Mai Viet Dang, head of the inspectorate of the tourism department, said Mao Hiem Viet did not have an adventure tour license and subsequently suspended the sites operated by the company.
The company’s director Vo Duc Trung admitted that he only sought permission from the managers of the Tuyen Lam Lake to set up adventure activities there, neglecting to obtain the proper license from authorities.
The zip line area has been in place at Tuyen Lam Lake since 2006 and at Golden Valley since 2011, according to the director.
A group of 25 students from an international elementary school in Ho Chi Minh City were excitingly enjoying the zip line when inspectors visited the site on Thursday.
Trung said the activities are popular with young students and the company attracts numerous bookings for group tours every year from international schools in Ho Chi Minh City.
The director added that because of the high demand from large groups, his adventure tourism packages were not open to individual tourists.
Dang, the chief tourism inspector, admitted that the appeal amongst international and domestic tourists leaves great potential for the adventure tourism sector to develop in Da Lat.
“However it is still a new tourism product in Vietnam and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has yet to create an official set of regulations to oversee adventure activities,” he added.
Dang also accepted the department’s responsibility in letting a company offer adventure tours for years without permission.
“The company did not notify us of their operations or seek a license from us. Because they offered such activities behind closed doors, we failed to detect and handle the issue on time,” he explained.
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