Da Lat, Vung Tau warn of tourist overload during Reunification Day holiday

Da Lat, a popular town characterized by its year-round cool climate in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong, expects to receive 180,000 tourists during the four-day break that will begin next Saturday, up 135 percent year-on-year.

Hotel room occupancy is expected to reach over 90 percent and most three-to-five-star hotels in downtown Da Lat are already full.

Room rates during the upcoming holiday also increased by 30 percent compared to normal days. Currently, Da Lat has more than 29,000 rooms that can serve around 50,000 tourists a day.

In the south, Vung Tau beach town is predicted to become one of the hottest travel destinations during the holiday break.

Trinh Hang, director of the provincial Department of Tourism, said the province expects to receive 160,000 tourists during the holiday, double compared to the three-day Hung Kings festival.

On major hotel booking sites like Booking.com and Traveloka, over 70 percent of mid-range hotels in Vung Tau have been fully booked.

Room prices in some hotels in the downtown area have doubled against normal days, at around VND2.3 million ($100.41) a day.

Some other tourist hotspots like Phu Quoc Island in the south and Sa Pa in the northern highlands cannot escape the holiday tourism boom either. Nearly 90 percent of three-to-five-star hotel rooms have been booked a week ahead of the holiday.

Vietnam’s domestic tourism has been recovering after two years of Covid. Crowds overran tourist hotspots during the Lunar New Year holiday in February and Hung Kings festival two weeks ago.

Currently, there are no longer any travel restrictions for domestic tourism.

The frequency of searches for domestic flights and accommodation facilities this month have increased 44 percent year-on-year, according to data from Google’s Destination Insights.