VIETNAM: Ha Long Bay Choking With Tourists And Waste

Ha Long Bay’s postcard-perfect karst islets have long attracted travellers to its Unesco-approved seascape. In 2017, the destination, in northern Vietnam’s Quang Ninh province, welcomed almost 7 million international and domestic visitors, according to website Halong Bay Tourism.

The region’s tourism department hopes to receive up to 16 million tourists by the end of next year, and to rake in VND30-40 trillion (US$1.3-1.7 billion) in revenue, it states, on its website.

Taking a major step towards achieving that goal, on December 30, Vietnam opened Van Don International Airport, which considerably cuts travel time to Ha Long Bay for overseas visitors.

What was once an eight-hour round trip from Hanoi is now just over an hour from an airport that, when fully operational, will connect the bay with 35 cities, including Hong Kong, Macau and 10 in mainland China.

The airport was unveiled alongside a new 60km highway, which reduces the drive time between Hanoi and Van Don to two hours and 30 minutes, and an international cruise port capable of simultaneously accommodating two liners with a combined carrying capacity of 8,460 passengers and crew.

If that isn’t a recipe for disastrous overtourism, Destinations Known doesn’t know what is.

As far back as August 2012, travel journalist Mary O’Brien wrote in Australian publication Traveller, the reality behind the picture-postcard views is worrying.

When I visited our boat was surrounded by container vessels, she continued. The beaches near docks and piers are often strewn with rubbish and travel sites have noted complaints from visitors about pollution.

In the years since, similar observations have been made countless times across social-media platforms and on web forums. Tourists complain of being shepherded to the same overcrowded sights – Surprise Cave seems to earn its name more for its hordes and gaudy illuminations than its rock formations – and about the amounts of debris in the sea.

Last summer, volunteers collected 741kg of waste from Coc Cheo and Ang Du beaches, in Ha Long Bay.

And it is not just the visible waste that is a concern. According to English-language online newspaper VietNamNet Bridge, in July last year as much as 80 per cent of local domestic waste water was being released, untreated, into the sea, which does not make an attractive bay.

In the same month, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) hired consultants to advise on tourism and waste management at the Unesco site.

Their findings, published on January 5, conclude that rapid increases in visitor numbers and pollution have damaged the reputation of Ha Long Bay, especially in the eyes of foreigners.

Unless the custodians of the destination clean up their act, and quickly, the engine of growth the country is counting on – tourism revenue – risks stalling. Unlike the planes, buses and cruise ships currently bearing down on Ha Long Bay.

Ha Long Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and popular travel destination in Quang Ninh Province, Vietnam. The name Hạ Long means descending dragon. Administratively, the bay belongs to Ha Long City, Cam Pha City, and is a part of Van Don District.

The bay features thousands of limestone karsts and isles in various shapes and sizes. Ha Long Bay is a center of a larger zone which includes Bai Tu Long Bay to the northeast, and Cat Ba Island to the southwest. These larger zones share a similar geological, geographical, geomorphological, climate, and cultural characters.

Ha Long Bay has an area of around 1,553 km2, including 1,960–2,000 islets, most of which are limestone. The core of the bay has an area of 334 km2 with a high density of 775 islets. The limestone in this bay has gone through 500 million years of formation in different conditions and environments.

The evolution of the karst in this bay has taken 20 million years under the impact of the tropical wet climate. The geo-diversity of the environment in the area has created biodiversity, including a tropical evergreen biosystem, oceanic and sea shore biosystem.

Ha Long Bay is home to 14 endemic floral species and 60 endemic faunal species.

Historical research surveys have shown the presence of prehistoric human beings in this area tens of thousands years ago. The successive ancient cultures are the Soi Nhu culture around 18,000–7000 BC, the Cai Beo culture 7000–5000 BC and the Ha Long culture 5,000–3,500 years ago.

Ha Long Bay also marked important events in the history of Vietnam with many artifacts found in Bai Tho Mountain, Dau Go Cave, Bai Chay.


Tourism Observer

VIETNAM: American Tourist Body Found In Hoi An, Australian Tourist Committed Suicide In Ha Long Bay

Initial investigations suggest an American tourist committed suicide.

Police in the tourist draw town of Hoi An in central Vietnam discovered the body of an American tourist in a hostel on Wednesday.

The dead man has been identified as a 31-year-old American, but his name has yet to be disclosed.

Police were alerted after locals reported a stench coming from a hostel room on Tran Nhan Tong Street, and subsequently discovered the decomposing body of a male foreigner.

Investigators are treating the death as a suicide.

“The victim had been staying at the hostel since 2016," Colonel Dinh Xuan Nghi, the chief of the Hoi An's police force, said. "During that time, he wrote a suicide note and asked the landlord to send it to his relatives in the U.S.”

Further investigations are underway.

Earlier this year, an Australian tourist also committed suicide in Ha Long Bay. Stephen John Scott, 54, reportedly jumped off an anchored cruiser with his legs tied to a heavy dumbbell while visiting the popular tourism destination in February.

Meanwhile, Local police concluded that the tourist tied himself to a dumbbell and jumped to his death.

An Australian who was found dead in Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay on Monday had committed suicide, police in Quang Ninh Province said on Tuesday.

54-year-old Stephen John Scott reportedly jumped off an anchored cruiser at 9 a.m. after his fellow travelers had left to visit a nearby island.

An investigation found that at 8 a.m., Scott and British tourist Janet Kennerley stayed on the boat when the other 14 guests left to visit the 'Amazing Cave'.

At about 8:30 a.m., Kennerley and the other six crew members on the boat heard a loud splash.

At 1 p.m., the Australian was found dead near an island in the bay.

Authorities said that Scott's legs had been tied to a heavy dumbbell, and concluded he had committed suicide.

The crew members confirmed both the dumbbell and the rope were from the boat.

Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO heritage site, is a popular destination for foreign visitors in Vietnam. Around 3.5 million foreigners visited the bay last year.

VIET NAM: China's Ban On Travel To South Korea,Chinese Tourists Flock Vietnam

According to Luong Quang So, head of the Mong Cai economic zone management board, on the days just before and after Tet (late January and early February), only 8,000-10,000 foreign travelers, including 2,500-3,500 Chinese, entered Vietnam through the Mong Cai border gate each day.

However, the figure increased sharply to 15,000 a day, including 5,000 from China in the last week, an increase of 50 percent over the same period last year.

Duong Van Co, chair of Mong Cai City, said that the increasing number of travelers has put pressure on customs clearance, but this has not had any impact on public order and tourism management.

The accommodations and tourism sites in Mong Cai are still capable of catering to travelers because most of the travelers go on domestic routes.

Thousands of Chinese travelers entered Vietnam through the Mong Cai international border gate two days after China's ban on travel to South Korea.

According to Co, as the number of tourists increases, the fees and charges collected from tourists at the border gate will increase. In 2016, the local authorities collected VND230 billion from this source.

On March 8, South Korean agencies said the Chinese administration met with representatives of tourism agencies and travel firms in Beijing and told the firms to stop providing tours to South Korea, commencing from March 15.

Seoul believes that the move is an unofficial sanction amid South Korea’s THAAD missile system deployment.

Beijing said it was disappointed about the South Korea’s decision, while it revealed to make comments about the retaliation plan.

Analysts said if Chinese travelers are prohibited from going to South Korea, they would flock to Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam instead.

Tran Chi Cuong, deputy director of the Da Nang City Tourism Department, said the department is keeping a close watch over the number of Chinese travelers.

The facilities in the city will still be able to serve Chinese travelers even if the number of tourists increases, Cuong said.

The sea city of Da Nang, with one of the most beautiful beaches on the planet, last year received 400,000 Chinese travelers. There are 25 air routes from China to Da Nang with 81 flights provided a week.

Nha Trang City of Khanh Hoa province is also popular with Chinese travelers. It received 1.1 million foreign travelers in 2016, including 525,000 Chinese travelers.

However, Nha Trang has been warned not to rely on the Chinese market. Tran Viet Trung, director of Khanh Hoa Tourism Department, admitted that the rapid development of the Chinese market has caused embarrassing problems in management.

Meanwhile, the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism is working with some localities that are popular destinations among Chinese tourists such as Quang Ninh, Danang and Khanh Hoa to cope with travel firms providing poor-quality tours to protect the interests of customers.

Vietnam’s tourism industry is taking a number of measures to increase service quality to welcome a greater number of Chinese visitors to the country, which is estimated to rise 50% to four million this year.

The agency also organizes many tourism promotion programs in China. Particularly, from May 11 to 20, the agency will cooperate with several travel firms to introduce Vietnam’s tourism in four Chinese cities, including Nanning, Fuzhou, Nanjing and Hefei.

The number of Chinese tourists to Vietnam has increased rapidly and is forecast to set a new record by the end of this year, with four million visitors, compared to 2.7 million in 2016.

The most popular Vietnamese destinations chosen by Chinese tourists include Hanoi, Halong, and Ninh Binh in the north; Danang, Hoi An, Hue and Nha Trang in the central region; and HCMC and Phu Quoc in the south.

Tour operators have also prepared themselves for the upsurge in Chinese arrivals.

Last year, the number of Chinese visitors increased by 50% and we expect strong growth this year. Therefore, we have to prepare hotel rooms in advance to ensure better service for the tourist season at the end of 2017, said Tu Quy Thanh, director of Lien Bang Travel Trading Company Limited,Lien Bang Travelink.

Similarly, Chinese tourists account for 60-70% of total international arrivals catered to by local tour operator Vietravel, and the company usually receives large orders for groups of tourists all year round.

VIETNAM: Fake Tours Or Zero Dollar Tours Depriving Vietnam Of Tourism Revenue And Killing Tourism

Zero Dollar Tours mean a tour that costs nothing except for the airfare. These tours, while not exclusively made up of Chinese travellers, often include a significant number of them.

As they say, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and zero dollar tours are no exception. Tourists, instead of seeing beautiful places and enjoying luxurious hotels, are taken to shopping malls and gifts shops.

There the visitors are persuaded, or sometimes forced, to buy items at inflated prices.

The tour companies get kickbacks from the shops, and in doing so can afford to keep running the tours. Worse still, the shops are often Chinese-owned and will almost always take cash exclusively.

The whole business revolving around the zero dollar tour concept leaves little room for local firms, while local government loses out on massive tax revenue.

The businesses and government aren’t the only losers in this game. The biggest losers are the tourists. Everyone joining in is doing so to save money. However, to their horror, the unwitting victims end up shelling out more on overpriced than they would have spent on a regular package tour.

For many tourists the scam leaves painful memories, and some vow never to return. A shame really, because they didn’t have a chance to see the sights, forced to go from shop to shop, treated as cash-cows.

Every once in a while stories surface of tourists abandoned on the street by their guides, the result of being unwilling to spend enough.

Some unfortunate tourists were held hostage by the very tour companies they entrusted their holidays with.

Many said they were taken to shopping malls instead of going out for promised sight-seeing; some were even threatened by their tour guides. They were told if they didn’t spend enough money on gifts they wouldn’t have a place to sleep.

In September 2013, 43 Chinese tourists were held for three hours in a jewelry shop in Hong Kong. They all purchased a zero dollar tour from a company in China.

For the entire duration of the tour, they were taken to eight different shopping malls and forced to spend hundreds of dollars on gifts and other unwanted goods.

By the Thai government’s estimation, zero dollar tours cost the country US$9 billion a year. Most tourism experts will tell you the poison runs even deeper, as the damage caused to a country’s image is irreversible.

It was perhaps no coincidence that right after the Thai government shut down the shady tours the number of Chinese visitors entering Viet Nam surged.

Statistics provided by the Viet Nam National Administration for Tourism show a record number of Chinese tourists during the first three months of 2017, with nearly one million visitors, marking a 63.5 per cent increase from the same period last year.

Popular destinations including the border province of Quang Ninh and the coastal city of Da Nang welcomed tens of thousands of Chinese visitors on a monthly basis.

It is safe to assume that after Thailand’s clampdown, the dodgy companies are looking for alternative destinations.

Those who follow the news might remember pictures of seemingly endless lines of Chinese visitors queuing up at the Mong Cai Border Checkpoint to enter Viet Nam.

They may also remember reports of a large number of unusual shops, selling only to Chinese tourists while denying entry to anyone else. Numerous accounts from industry insiders revealed that these events were all part of the same sinister circle.

Tourism experts have long identified zero dollar tours as a serious threat to the country’s tourism industry, even as a form of fraud that must be stopped to protect Chinese tourists and local companies.

Many pointed out that other factors, on top of financial loss, must be taken into account.

The stress on local infrastructure networks, the impact on the environment and the negative influence the practice may have on tourists from other countries are all cause for concern.

In late March, the Quang Ninh authorities closed some 15 of the shops, a positive development in the ongoing fight against zero dollar tour companies.

However, for the future health of its tourism business, Viet Nam must take serious action to shut down the companies and individuals involved, just like the Thai government.

Inevitably, Thailand’s strong action precipitated a drop in the number of Chinese tourists, but most experts at the Bangkok summit agreed with the decision and believed it would benefit the tourism industry in the long run.

In the meantime, my Thai friends are putting on a brave face.

Those tours have plagued our industry for years. We are happy to welcome back Chinese visitors. Hopefully, this time around they won’t be on one of those rip-off tours, said a Thai tour guide.

We cannot allow the image of our country and our people to be ruined in the name of greed, a Thai tour guide said, I am confident that even without those zero dollar tours Chinese people will come back to see my beautiful country.”

Chinese visitors amounted to nearly 30 per cent of the total number of visitors to Viet Nam last year and this figure is expected to rise in the years to come.

It is of great importance that the country’s tourism authority starts working on measures to prevent the rise of zero dollar tours, not just to protect local tourism but also the image of a hospitable country and the honest, friendly people of Viet Nam.

The better name, Fake Tours