Among tours serving visitors during Hue Festival, enterprises have stepped up to exploit tours relating to Lagoons, Waterfalls, or Springs. (Tourists are experiencing "SUP" rowing on Tam Giang lagoon)
Focusing on the demand stimulus
According to the Organizing Committee of Hue Festival 2020, the main aim throughout Hue Festival is to create a great festive event to stimulate tourism. Hue Festival 2020 experiences numerous changes that its scale has been decreased due to the impact of the pandemic, yet it plays an even much more significant role in contributing to the recovery of Hue tourism in the "new normality" period.
In the plan to restore tourism, Hue especially put cultural, sports events, and also festival programs on its priority. Head of the Department of Tourism stated since this event has a significant role to be the province's largest tourism stimulus activity in the year, the Organizing Committee in general and the Tourism sector in particular are to utilize the resources to have the most attractive stimulus policies. Accordingly, there will be a 100% exemption of the heritage entrance fee for all tourists during the Hue Festival Week.
"For enterprises, the Department of Tourism orients their activities and continues to encourage maintaining the implementation of tour routes during the current stimulus period, aiming to exploit these during the Hue Festival. The industry has already had many orientations to create tours to lagoons, waterfalls and springs combining with heritage and festivals to serve tourists during the festival," said Mr. Tran Huu Thuy Giang, Deputy Director of the Department of Tourism.
By mid-July 2020, many new tour routes has been announced and operated by businesses towards Hue Festival 2020. Especially, Hue Smile Joint Stock Company has exploited the tour "Live slowly one day - 365 days of peace". Recently, the Travel Association announced and operated the City tour to explore the film settings by vintage Vespa and Honda 67 motorbikes. Also, Huetourist Travel Company has been designing and exploiting 20 new tours with different durations - 2 days 1 night, 1 day, 1/2 day costing 650 thousand dong/ person to serve guests during the festival time.
As one of the stakeholders of the Hue Festival’s Organizing Committee in developing tours for the festival, Mr. Vu Van Chuong - Director of Pride Tourism Vietnam - Hue Co., Ltd, stated that the company had built a number of 2-day&1-night tours to serve the artists and their relatives to attend the festival, with the number of appropriate tour days for the artists' spare time. High-class resort tours and the utmost price support policies are expected to give artists and relatives chances to have a wholesome resting time when coming to Hue.
The City tour to explore the film settings by vintage Vespa and Honda 67 motorbikes would be exploited during Hue Festival 2020
Ready to welcome tourists
According to the Provincial Association of Tourism, in response to Hue Festival 2020, travel operators, accommodation, and other travel services all agreed to reduce tour prices, entrance tickets, transportation services, etc., meanwhile, increasing the number of services and their attached utilities. Its goal is to create the largest stimulus program after reopening Hue tourism, once the epidemic has been nationally well-controlled.
The Department of Tourism informed that in early August 2020, the tourism industry will welcome a fam-trip group - a UNESCO - Hanoi travel Club for their aim of surveying and connecting products to take visitors to travel and experience the coming festival. Since this is a large tour club consisting of the top "tour operators" on a nationwide scale, there would be certain valuable opportunities for Hue enterprises to have new cooperation with newly-formed tours and services.
Regarding accommodation services, since Hue will not receive foreign tourists this year, it is expected that the supply will exceed the demand when it comes to the number of rooms. The Provincial Association of Residents affirmed that the number of guests could be less than the number of rooms, which would easily result in unfair competition. Therefore, the Association has organized meetings to reach a consensus on service prices, publicly announced prices, and all members pledged not to lower prices to drag guests to their accommodation.
In order to serve the visitors with the best service during Hue Festival 2020, the Cyclo Union agreed on the price of passenger transport. Specifically, from the first km to less than 3 km, the transport cost is 20,000 VND / km; from the 3rd km on, the transporting price is VND 10,000 / km. Besides conducting public posting of the price list at parking lots, they also came to the agreement on specific regulations on specific uniforms and license plates of union members, aiming to build a union of professional and friendly cyclos.
That Hue Festival is a "top" Hue's event in 2020 with a dual goal of contributing to the recovery of tourism and the provincial socio-economic development. By now, Hue is basically ready to welcome tourists with good, safe and friendly services.
Mr. Huynh Tien Dat - Director of Hue Festival Center, Deputy Head of Organizing Committee of Hue Festival 2020, shared: "Hue Festival 2020, with many unique, novel, and attractive features, not only is a promising event for visitors to enjoy the vivid cross of tradition and modernity, and experience the colors of art and culture, but also gives tourists opportunities to be immersed in the atmosphere of an ancient town which yet carries the civilized beauty of a green - clean - bright heritage and a city with four seasons of flowers, peace, happiness.
Story and photos: Quang Sang