Vietnamese tourists begin canceling France tours after deadly Paris attacks
Vietnamese tourists begin canceling France tours after deadly Paris attacks
Vietnamese tour organizers have begun receiving booking cancelations for France and European packages, less than a week after the terrible attacks that killed more than 120 people in Paris.
Thai Thanh Lan, director of a travel firm specializing in offering French tours, said she had to cancel several packages slated for December, due to security concerns in the wake of the November 13 bloodshed.
“Tourists are concerned about the situation in Paris, while new customers have also been hesitant about booking France packages,” she told Dan Tri (Intellectual) newswire.
Local travel agencies say they will not be surprised if customers who have booked tours to celebrate Christmas and New Year in France scrap their bookings, according to Dan Tri.
Vacationers in Ho Chi Minh City also began canceling their France and EU tours on Monday, The Saigon Times Online reports.
Most of the travel firms said they only made a couple of booking cancelations, while Hoan My Travel Co. said as many as 60 of its customers had decided to scrap their Paris visit.
“Two groups with a total of 60 tourists have canceled their France tour to celebrate New Year,” Hoan My director Nguyen The Khai told The Saigon Times Online on Monday.
“Some other customers have asked about packages to France and the EU, but there is little likelihood they will opt for those tours.”
Hoan My Co. has received 100 bookings for New Year tours to France and is extremely concerned they will all be canceled.
“Customers asked us about the situation in Paris to decide whether they should go there, but we could only tell them to wait,” Khai said.
Other tour organizers, including Saigontourist, Travelink, and Fiditour said they have yet to receive any cancelations for bookings to France, according to The Saigon Times Online.
“Although customers have not dropped tours, they have asked to deposit for the bookings later to watch the situation [in Paris],” Travelink director Tu Quy Thanh said.
“So we are yet to be able to evaluate the impact of the Paris attacks on our business.”
The Paris attacks, consisting of suicide bombings and shootings for which the Islamic State has claimed responsibility, killed at least 129 people and wounded 352 others on November 13.
