Club planned to attract Chinese tourists

Like the newly-established club to receive Thai and Lao travelers through the central region's border gates, the forthcoming club will implement measures to improve services, apply a minimum tour price, and prevent price undercutting and poor services for Chinese tourists. Travel firms that have offices in Mong Cai can also join the club.

The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) supports the establishment of the club and expects the cluba's operation will help resolve the bad competitive practices among travel firms and thus enhance the reputation of the nation's tourism industry.

Vu The Binh, chairman of the Vietnam Travel Association, told the Daily that the tourism industry needs to carry out more activities to monitor the services for Chinese visitors to the country via Mong Cai. If travel firms team up, they and the sector as a whole will benefit.

The business situation has worsened in the last two years. The VNAT has several times discussed solutions and I think the agency's sanctions and the response from tourism companies is encouraging, he said.

Binh said Mong Cai was responsible for 70% of the total number of Chinese tourists holding laissez-passers to travel to Vietnam, around 300,000 visitors a year. In recent years, Chinese passport holders have started to tour the country via Mong Cai in droves.

We estimate around 100,000 passport holders will travel via the gate every year. Itandrsquo;s a big number so the tourism sector needs to have measures in place to maintain and develop the industry, Binh said.

China is the biggest market for the country's tourism sector with nearly 663,000 visitors in the first half of this year, up 51.5% year-on-year. The total number of international visitors to the country in the same period was more than 2.9 million.

Source = vietnamnet.vn