Chairman of Hoi An City People's Committee Nguyen Van Son affirmed that this information is completely fabricated and untrue. The cultural sector and the police are verifying and handling fake news that affects the community.
All members of the Hoai River Tourist Boat Cooperative and Hoi An Cyclo Cooperative register for free operation. No individual, organization, or state management agency in Hoi An accepts any "grease" to allow the owners of cyclos and tourist boats to operate.
However, in reality, there are transactions of cyclos and tourist boats on the Hoai River with prices ranging from 600 million to over 1 billion VND. But those are civil transactions and sales.
The reason why a rudimentary cyclo or a simple rowing boat has such an exorbitant price is because 20 years ago, when banning motor vehicles in the old town and restricting personal vehicles - even rudimentary ones - Hoi An authorities only allowed 100 cyclos to operate to pick up and drop off guests in the old town.
Up to now, Hoi An still maintains 100 cyclos and 293 tourist boats. This is a good way, very early on, of Hoi An to manage tourism activities, especially to limit vehicles that are at risk of causing traffic congestion on both waterways and pedestrian streets. And the effectiveness has been evident over the past 20 years.
People can buy, sell, and transfer cyclos and tourist boats, but the overall number in Hoi An remains unchanged.
Hoi An also limits the number of cyclos and tourist boats, but does not sell ownership certificates. The government even had a policy of providing cyclos to the poor in the old town as a means of livelihood and did not charge any fees 20 years ago. The same goes for boats.
Now that tourism is developing, more and more visitors come to visit and experience, cyclo services to visit the old town, and tourist boats on the Hoai River are "doing well". Depending on the circumstances and conditions, people have transferred and sold vehicles for billions of dong, which is normal.
Even the method of managing the number of vehicles entering the inner city like Hoi An needs to be promoted and replicated. Tourist cities that are stuck with traffic jams, too many 45-seat passenger cars, taxis entering the inner city during rush hour like Nha Trang, Da Lat, Da Nang, Hue... should study and apply this.
