Hoi An town.

Local travellers are still packing their suitcases during the year-end tourist season, despite difficult economic times, according to industry insiders.

Tour companies reported that the number of tourists booked for foreign tours has increased significantly.

Saigontourist said that up to on August 19, the number of tourists planning, to travel on National Day September 2, had risen 14% over the same period last year.

Vietravel also reported a surge of 20% while Fiditour’sfigure showed a 22%  rise, with roughly 3,000 travellers.

Industry insiders are calling it a seasonal increase, with 30-50%  sales being offered in regional tourism markets such as Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.

Tour agents said that customers often choose three to five day tours, especially to Thailand. Saigontourist said three had so far been more than 320 tourists booked to travel to Thailand from August 28 to 30, up 67%  year-on-year. Vietravel reported roughly a 30% increase.

Despite accounting for an insignificant number of companies’ foreign tours, the growth rates of long distant and costly tours to the US, the Repubic of Korea, Japan, the EU and Australia have reportedly increased sharply as well.

Fiditour said that event though travellers booking tours worth more than US$1,000 only represent 17% of the company’s total foreign tours, the growth rate for such tours is still in double digits.

The number of tourists booking costly tours through Vietravel, Saigontourist and Hoan My was also up.

To attract tourist, travel companies said they have tried their best to cut costs.

Head of Saigontourist’s domestic tour division Quoc Bao said his company had bought nearly 500 plane tickets to save costs for customers before airlines applied additional fuel fees from August 15.

However, industry insiders said that prices of domestic tours would still increase roughly 5-7% over the same period last year due to soaring transportation costs. (VNA)