After the announcement of opening to Vietnamese visitors from September 7, Japan has become an attractive destination, but with many conditions attached.
To Quyen (34 years old, Phu Tho) after nearly 3 years of waiting, immediately searched for tours to Japan in October. However, when she was consulted and learned about the conditions to go to Japan, she found that her dream was still far away, mainly related to visa procedures because there were still many missing documents and the chance of getting a visa was not high.
Nguyen Lan (27 years old, Hanoi) did not have any problems with visa but her budget was limited. Ms. Lan planned to go on her own, then stay at a friend's house who is working in Japan to save money on hotels. However, according to the regulations after the opening, Vietnamese tourists can only go to Japan on a tour or have to book all services such as air tickets and hotels through a travel agency. Spending more than 30 million VND on a tour is beyond her ability, so Ms. Lan had to wait.
Japan opens its doors to tourism right in the red leaf season, attracting many tourists. Photo: Thach Long
"The difficulty of Japan tours at this time is issues related to epidemic prevention regulations. In addition, the Japanese Government is currently limiting the number of visitors to only 50,000 per day, so the number of rejected applications may be high," said Ms. Doan Thanh Tra, Director of Marketing and Communications, Saigontourist Travel Services Company.
Some other companies are now only accepting selected customers to facilitate the procedures. "To avoid wasting time for all parties, travel companies usually only accept good documents with international travel history. Individual customers with blank passports almost lose the opportunity to go to Japan," said Mr. Nguyen Van Hung, Deputy Director of Vietfoot Travel.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Japan was already a country that was quite strict in the visa approval process for tourists. In addition, from October onwards, the number of Japanese visa applications is expected to be very large. The process of assessing customer applications during this period also takes more time. The embassy has not announced the expected time to return the application instead of making an appointment as before. This makes travel companies and customers quite passive. Therefore, to ensure time for customers, many companies have postponed tours from the end of September, October to November to start departing.
According to a survey at some travel companies in Vietnam, tours to Japan began to be sold from mid-September. This is a new destination in the fall, and is also the newest international tour on the market taking tourists abroad this year.
The number of customers interested in Japan tours is also large. According to a representative of Vietravel, since opening, this unit has received nearly 1,000 customers interested in and registering to book Japan tours with the trend of booking in groups of family or friends from 4 to 6 people.
The most popular tour product currently is Japan in the red leaf season, with prices ranging from 28 to 37 million VND per person, depending on the schedule and airline. This price has increased by 10 to 20% compared to before the pandemic. Additional costs include document processing, airfare... If traveling in a group, the price may be even higher because the travel agency has difficulty booking tickets in order.
"The increase in tour prices is understandable because current costs are no longer at the same level as before the pandemic. However, tourists can still buy tours at good prices if they look for promotional programs or if they are eligible to register for FAM trips, the cost can be only one-third of the normal tour price," said a representative of Vietfoot Travel.
After the opening, Vietnamese tourists can only travel to Japan on a tour or if they travel independently, they still have to book all services such as air tickets and hotels through a travel agency. This becomes a barrier for those who want to travel but stay with relatives or friends in Japan to save costs.
However, representatives of many travel companies said that they believe that from now until the end of the year, Japan will gradually loosen regulations, like many European countries before, which had difficulties in the early stages of opening, but when everything stabilized, all regulations became more favorable. It is expected that in the last two months of the year, tourists will have many new tour options such as inter-route programs, cruise tours to Japan...
