In recent years, Quang Ninh province has limited the number of tourist ships in Ha Long Bay to improve service quality, protect the landscape and environment of Ha Long Bay, especially the core area, according to UNESCO's recommendations.
Enterprises and people can build new ships, but can only replace them with old ships, to ensure that the number of ships does not increase. Therefore, many individuals and businesses that want to build tourist boats in Ha Long Bay have to spend a large amount of money to buy old boat parts to build new ones instead.
Due to the lack of additional ships, many ship owners from Quang Ninh have applied for a license to build ships and operate in Lan Ha Bay, Hai Phong.
However, according to the People's Committee of Quang Ninh province, limiting the number of tourist ships in Ha Long Bay has some shortcomings. Moreover, limiting the number of ships of enterprises in Ha Long Bay is not in accordance with the provisions of law, especially in the current situation, it is necessary to ensure the legitimate freedom of business of enterprises according to Resolution 68.
Therefore, to ensure compliance with regulations, it is necessary to consider not issuing documents to limit the number of tourist ships, only implementing measures to regulate the number of ships operating in the core area of Ha Long Bay in accordance with the load capacity at tourist destinations.
However, according to the People's Committee of Quang Ninh province, this also has some disadvantages, in which the management and regulation of activities according to the tourism load at the locations will be more difficult; increasing pressure in the heritage core area when large-scale tourist ships operate as well as tourist ships from Bai Tu Long Bay and Lan Ha Bay (Hai Phong) to operate; there may be a situation of supply exceeding demand, leading to unhealthy competition and waste of resources.
According to the Ha Long Tourist Boat Association, the capacity of more than 500 tourist boats in Ha Long Bay is currently too much excess compared to demand and usually only reaches about 40-50% of capacity (except for the summer months).
In particular, in recent years alone, because newly built ships can replace them with larger ships, there have been an increase of about 2,000 seats (for day tour ships) and 252 rooms, equivalent to 504 guests (for accommodation ships), although the number of ships has decreased.
With current capacity, the Ha Long Bay tourist fleet is capable of welcoming over 25,000 visitors at the same time, however, except for peak days in the summer - there are days when Ha Long Bay welcomes more than 30,000 visitors, and on normal days, the highest is only about 15,000 visitors/day.
Therefore, for many years now, there have been races to reduce prices between cruise ships to compete with customers.
Not to mention, if tourist boats from Lan Ha Bay are allowed to operate in Ha Long Bay, the total number of boats operating in Ha Long Bay will be very large. This will also affect the environment and landscape of the World Natural Heritage Ha Long Bay, which UNESCO previously recommended not to increase the number of ships.
According to the Ha Long Tourist Boat Association, if the number of tourist boats in Ha Long Bay is not limited, it could repeat the story of too many redundant hotel rooms on the shore as it is now in Ha Long.
Therefore, the Ha Long Tourist Boat Association recommends that Quang Ninh province consider keeping the current number of tourist boats.
