In order to attract tourists to Quang Ninh, on December 9, 2021, local leaders agreed to reduce 50% of entrance fees to Ha Long Bay, the provincial museum, and Yen Tu relic site. The exemption period is until June 30, 2022.
Accordingly, there is only about 1 week left until the end of the exemption period for Ha Long Bay entrance fee. The current reduced price will return to the old price, for daytime visitors, routes 1, 2 and 5 cost 250,000 VND/time/person; routes 3 and 4 cost 200,000 VND/time/person.
For visitors staying overnight on the bay, ticket prices range from 500,000 - 750,000 VND/time/person, depending on the route and length of stay on the bay.
From July 1, ticket prices to visit Ha Long Bay will increase again.
The director of a company specializing in selling tours and vouchers for sightseeing on Ha Long Bay said that the company had just received a notice from a shipping company in Ha Long. The shipping company said that, according to the latest dispatch dated June 14 from Quang Ninh province, from July 1, the ticket prices will increase again. Due to the unavoidable situation, the shipping company wanted the travel agency to inform the group of tourists on July 4 that they would charge an additional ticket price, which is the amount that the tourists should have received a discount on.
"Our company has signed a contract with the shipping line, the price has been fixed. The customers are not only this group but also many, up to several hundred people. Now asking us to charge customers extra is very difficult to say," the director of this company shared.
Not to mention, hundreds of vouchers for overnight stays on the ship, worth billions of dong, businesses have sold since 2021 at the old price (with reduced entrance fees to Ha Long Bay). Now that the fees have increased again, businesses cannot collect more from customers. Travel agencies and agents can only collect from new bookings.
The Ha Long Bay Management Board recently sent a document to the Quang Ninh Department of Tourism requesting that the tourism stimulus support policy no longer be implemented from July 1. Mr. Nguyen Tien Dung, Head of the Management Board, explained that the stimulus implementation has had a positive and timely impact on tourism activities in Quang Ninh.
After the province opened its doors to tourists, the number of visitors to Ha Long Bay increased sharply. On peak days, the number of tickets reached 28,244. The cumulative number from the beginning of the year to June 12 reached nearly 614,000 tickets.
The Ha Long Bay Management Board proposed that the Quang Ninh Department of Tourism agree with the Board not to continue advising and proposing tourism stimulus policies and will not reduce Ha Long Bay entrance fees in the near future.
According to the Quang Ninh Department of Tourism, in the first 5 months of the year, the province welcomed more than 4.2 million visitors, an increase of 79% over the same period in 2021; total revenue from tourism reached over VND 8,800 billion, exceeding the proposed scenario by 8%.
