Sell below cost
Since 2018, the price for renting a sightseeing boat during the day (hourly boat - boat rented by the hour) has been announced from 500,000 VND/hour for boats with less than 50 seats and 700,000 VND/hour for larger boats. On peak days and weekends, the price can be increased, but not more than 30%.
According to boat owners, the authorities' ceiling on boat rental prices is partly to avoid "ripping off" tourists, but in reality, most sell below that level to compete.
A cruise ship owner with less than 50 seats said that, except for peak days, he sells at the ceiling price, but on normal days he only sells for 300,000 - 400,000 VND/hour.
"If the tour guides and operators don't force us to lower our prices, we have to proactively offer low prices to get customers," said the boat owner.
However, even though the selling price is much lower than the ceiling price set by the authorities, the tax authority still collects the ceiling price and the full journey, even if the ship returns to shore earlier than expected.
“Route 1 runs for 4 hours, route 2 runs for 6 hours. Suppose a boat with less than 50 seats runs route 1, but after 2 hours it returns to shore, then it still has to pay tax on the total 4-hour boat rental fee of 2 million VND, while in reality it is only rented for 400,000 VND/hour and assuming it runs for the full 4 hours, the total revenue is only 1.6 million VND” - Mr. Nguyen Duc Binh - a tourist boat owner - shared.
Meanwhile, the cost of a train trip is also quite expensive because it includes many types of fees, charges, fuel; not to mention the salary for workers. Therefore, the income of crew members and service staff on the train only fluctuates from 5-6 million VND/person/month.
According to ship owners, to compensate for the competition to reduce ship rental prices, they can only rely on customers ordering meals on board. This is also the main source of income for crew members and employees. However, sometimes disputes arise between ship owners and customers over the quality and price of meals.
Increasingly excess capacity
According to Mr. Nguyen Van Phuong - Vice President of Ha Long Tourist Boat Association, ship owners are worried about the current situation of the fleet having too much excess capacity and in the near future there will be a higher possibility of excess capacity, because there will be more large ships appearing in Ha Long Bay. Not to mention that Quang Ninh province also has a policy to temporarily station 100 more ships in Bai Tu Long Bay, but they are allowed to run the route to Ha Long Bay.
The race to slash charter rates is expected to be more intense, and there will be a risk of reducing service quality because ship owners will cut down on non-mandatory services, or pay low wages, which will affect the quality of crew and staff...
According to the Department of Transport of Quang Ninh province, previously, there were 529 tourist boats of all kinds in Ha Long Bay and after a period of building new ones to replace them, there are now 508. However, the capacity is higher than before, because the newly built replacement boats are allowed to be larger.
Currently, the day cruise ships in Ha Long Bay alone can accommodate about 25,000 visitors at a time, while except for peak days in the summer - there are days when Ha Long Bay welcomes more than 30,000 visitors, on normal days, the highest is only about 15,000 visitors/day. Not to mention, the overnight cruise fleet has a total of about 2,000 double bedrooms but is rarely filled.
According to calculations, if operating at full capacity, the Ha Long Bay tourist fleet is capable of serving more than 7 million visitors to the bay and about 1.4 million overnight guests/year. However, in 2023, Ha Long Bay will welcome about 2.69 million visitors and this year is expected to be higher than last year but not much.
