Vietnamese tourists cancel China tours over Chinese oil rig tension

May 13, 2014 | 10:41
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Many Vietnamese tourists have asked their tour organizers to cancel their upcoming trips to China because they do not wish to travel there at this time of high tension over a giant oil rig China illegally towed into Vietnamese waters early this month.


Local holidaymakers say they feel “uneasy about traveling to China at this time,” the deputy head of the outbound tour department of a major travel agency in Ho Chi Minh City told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

“Our hotline was flooded with calls from customers over the weekend who either canceled their tours or switched to other destinations,” he said.

His company experienced poor booking for China packages between 2012 and 2013, but the situation improved in the year to April.

“We were about to cheer for the improvement when the new incident came,” he said.

China illegally stationed its Haiyang 981 drilling rig in the East Vietnam Sea, within the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf of Vietnam, on May 1, and deployed as many as 80 vessels, including warships, to guard the facility.

Many of these Chinese vessels have rammed and fired high-powered water cannons at Vietnamese ships which have been requesting them to leave Vietnamese waters ever since.

Tran Van Long, general director of Viet Media Travel, said his customers are canceling their trips to China on a daily basis.

Customers who booked tours at Vietravel, meanwhile, wanted to switch to traveling to Japan or Hong Kong, according to the company’s deputy head of marketing Nguyen Minh Man.

But what worries tour organizers most is if the situation will prevail.

Tensions caused by China’s illegal operation of the oil rig in Vietnam’s waters may directly affect sales in the summer, which is the busiest season for the tourism industry, said Tu Quy Thanh, director of Lien Bang Travel Co.

“It is really troublesome,” he said. “All of the summer tours to China have already been planned and we have also cleared payment for running ads in the press.”

Representatives of airlines that offer services between HCMC and Chinese cities told Tuoi Tre on Sunday that some of their passengers have not showed up for check-in to board their booked flights to China.

“The situation will surely affect the number of Vietnam Airlines passengers flying between HCMC and Hanoi and the cities in China,” the flag carrier’s spokesman Le Truong Giang commented.

Bookings for China tours began to decrease in late 2012, when Chinese boats cut seismic survey cables of the Vietnamese ship Binh Minh 02 off Vietnam’s Con Co Island. 

 

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