Travel companies, who suspended tours to Thailand early last month due to the political unrest there, said they are planning to resume them in June.
Ho Chi Minh City-based travel firm TST Tourist would accept bookings for tours to Thailand from June 5, its general director, Lai Minh Duy, said.
“We are waiting for more information about the developments in Thailand from the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT),” he said. “We will only let our customers go if the Thai authority guarantees the country is now safe for tourists.”
Two other HCMC-based firms, Fiditour and Nature Tourist, are also planning to resume tours to Thailand next month, Thoi Bao Kinh Te Sai Gon Online (Saigon Economic Times Online) newspaper reported.
But some other HCMC-based tour operators, like Vietravel, Ben Thanh Tourist, and Youth Tourist, said they would continue to study the situation in Thailand before selling tours to the country again.
The nine-week political turmoil has seen bookings for Thai tours with Vietravel fall by 50 percent in the last few months compared to the same period last year, the company said.
Saigontourist said it took 3,000 fewer tourists to Thailand in the last three months compared to the same period in 2009.
But tour operators said the decline was offset by an increase in demand for tours to other destinations.
Tours to other nearby destinations like Malaysia, Hong Kong, China, Cambodia, Laos, and Singapore are becoming increasingly popular with Vietnamese travelers.
Despite the suspension of tours to Thailand, Doan Thi Thanh Tra, head of marketing at Saigontourist, said her company posted 20 percent growth in revenues in the first five months year on year.
Travel companies are positive about the recovery of Thailand’s tourism market because the country remains a popular destination for shopping and entertainment services with competitive tour prices.
The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism last month ordered travel firms to suspend tours to Bangkok, the center of Thailand’s political turmoil, and limit the number of Vietnamese traveling to other high-risk areas in the country.
The worst political violence in modern Thai history, according to Reuters, which claimed 85 lives and saw nearly 2,000 others injured, came to an end last week.
Pichai Raktashina, TAT’s director in HCMC, said Thailand has returned to 90 percent normalcy and his agency plans to offer new promotions and tourism products next month to once again attract tourists from Vietnam and other countries.
Thailand is one of the most popular destinations for Vietnamese, attracting some 360,000 of them a year.
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