Through new buildings and replacement buildings, up to now, the Ha Long Bay tourist fleet has over 500 ships, including 170 accommodation ships, the rest are day tour ships.
After the sinking and fire of cruise ships, including fatal cases, the standards for building new cruise ships have been gradually raised, even higher than the general regulations.
A period of massive closure caused the number of ships to increase sharply, so after that, Quang Ninh province did not allow more ships to be built, only replacing old ships. Accordingly, a newly built ship can be combined with 2-3 old ships, to have larger ships and reduce the number of ships.
The number of ships has decreased to the current level, but the capacity has increased sharply.
In particular, in recent years alone, because newly built ships are allowed to replace them with larger ships, about 2,000 more seats (for day tour ships) and 252 rooms have been added, equivalent to 504 guests (for accommodation ships).
According to the Ha Long Tourist Boat Association, the current capacity of more than 500 tourist boats in Ha Long Bay is too much compared to demand and often only reaches about 40-50% of capacity (except for the summer months).
With current capacity, the Ha Long Bay tourist fleet is capable of welcoming over 25,000 visitors at the same time, however, except during peak summer - there are days when the bay welcomes more than 30,000 visitors, other times, 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.
Despite the excess capacity, registering to buy entrance tickets and boat rental is extremely difficult for tourists, especially short-distance tourists, because tourists do not know whether the boat has a seat or not, how many hours to run because this information is not available on the technology platforms of the authorities, but must ask acquaintances or boat owners or travel companies.
Meanwhile, for trains and airplanes, just one click on the homepage is enough to understand all schedules, and you can even check-in for airplanes anywhere.
Not only tourist boats, but tickets to visit Ha Long Bay cannot be purchased online, although this problem has been raised for many years, so tourists must go directly to the port or ask the boat owner or tourism companies.
In many ways, ship owners have a list of tourists that are written accurately on paper and then presented to relevant agencies to request an order.
Previously, Quang Ninh province had a policy of organizing tourist train activities such as those of airplanes, trains, and even passenger vans at public bus stations. Accordingly, tourists can book train tickets, visit the bay online, or go directly to the port to buy tickets and departure ships at fixed times.
If this can be done, tourists will be very relaxed, because just buying a ticket can get on the train according to the time printed on the ticket.
But until now, that idea is still on paper.
