The Dolphin restaurant ship has just appeared at Ha Long International Passenger Port, Bai Chay Ward, Quang Ninh Province, many people thought it was a completely new international cruise ship in Ha Long Bay. Because the boat is quite large, the design is completely new.
According to a representative of the Department of Construction of Quang Ninh province, this is the newest restaurant ship on Ha Long Bay among the approved restaurant shipbuilding projects.
In terms of size, the Dolphin restaurant ship is not as large as the pair of overnight ships worth about 35 million USD that were put into operation last year, but this is the cruise ship with the largest capacity of guests in Ha Long Bay to this point.
The $35 million overnight pair are both up to 109.9m long - equal to the standard length of a soccer field according to FIFA regulations, 18.68m wide. Meanwhile, the Dolphin restaurant ship is 97m long and 18.3m wide. In particular, according to the safety regulation of 1.5, the Dolphin is designed to reach safety level 8.
Mr. Bui Huy Thuat - representative of Time Flow Company Limited, the owner of the Dolphin restaurant ship - said that the Dolphin ship is built from 6 cruise ships per day, because for a long time, Quang Ninh province has not issued a new license, but only allowed the new ship to be built to replace the old ship ship ship.
According to Mr. Thuat, the total investment capital for Dolphin ships is nearly 300 billion, so the 6 old ships cost nearly 10 billion VND.
According to the Ha Long Tourist Boat Association, up to this point, Ha Long Bay has had about 6-7 restaurant boats, while according to the temporary plan, the whole bay is allowed to build 10 restaurant boats.
The first restaurant ship in Ha Long Bay was put into operation more than 10 years ago, with a capacity of about 280 - 300 guests/trip.
The following ships will become larger and larger, with the Ambassador carrying over 500 guests.
According to Mr. Nguyen Lam Nguyen - Deputy Director of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Quang Ninh - the fleet on Ha Long Bay, including accommodation ships, day tour ships, restaurant ships, is getting more modern and larger, with increasingly high safety and many attractive services.
In particular, the restaurant ship group has made great breakthroughs, not only the ship is getting larger, more beautiful and modern, but also pioneering in opening new services, including music shows, with top stars across the country.
However, there are also concerns and worries about the efficiency and capacity of destinations in Ha Long Bay because the ships are too large.
A restaurant ship owner who has been operating in Ha Long Bay for many years said that gathering enough or 2/3, even 50% of guests in the current context of fierce competition is very difficult, while the operating cost is quite large.
According to Mr. Bui Huy Thuat, not to mention port, wharf, gasoline and oil fares... the salary paid to workers is also a headache because the ship has about 100 employees.
The fact that ships are getting bigger and often only focus on taking passengers on Ha Long Bay 1 and 2 also causes local congestion for tourist destinations on these two routes as well as traffic safety problems.
To partly handle this problem, some ship owners have adjusted their running hours to avoid peak hours. However, in the long term, according to ship owners, it is necessary to open more beaches and attractive tourist attractions on Ha Long 3, 4 journeys... so that ships can switch to these journeys.
Currently, the whole Ha Long Bay has only one Ti-Top beach, part of the Ha Long Bay 2 Journey, so most of the ships bring visitors here. Meanwhile, the plan to open more beaches in Ha Long Bay to serve tourists and reduce the load on routes 1 and 2 has been discussed for many years but has not been implemented.
