Flooding, typhoon hit tour operators
HCMC – The organizer of an international yacht race from Hong Kong to Vietnam has shelved the competition scheduled to take place on Wednesday.
The Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club said the VinaCapital Hong Kong to Vietnam Race had been canceled due to the approaching super typhoon Megi, which has battered the Philippines on its course to the East Sea.
The organizer said it regarded safety as the first priority for all its events, particularly for its international Category 1 Offshore events. It would be unthinkable to send the boats to stormy high seas, it said in a statement.
However, the organizer said that competitors and the club are fully supportive of running the race in the middle of next October. The date is expected to be set soon to allow international competitors to plan their racing calendars.
Vu Duy Vu, deputy director of the race’s local partner Saigontourist Travel Service Co., has confirmed the cancellation.
“We completed all preparatory activities for the race but we had to cancel it for safety reasons,” he told the Daily on Tuesday.
Earlier, the central Government had allowed Saigontourist Holding Company, the parent company of Saigontourist Travel Service Co., to combine with the foreign partner to organize the 656km race from Wednesday to next Wednesday.
The event has been taking place every two years since 2004.
* In related news, local travel firms said they have stopped selling tours to Quang Binh Province known for the World Heritage-listed Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park which is home to the longest underground rivers and the largest caverns, as the severe flooding in the central region is still unpredictable.
“We have stopped selling tours to Quang Binh since last week. Tours to other destinations in the central region like Danang and Hue are still selling as normal but fewer tourists are purchasing such tours,” Tran Quoc Bao, head of the domestic department of Saigontourist Travel Company, told the Daily on Tuesday.
Tour operators said that the hardest hit provinces, including Quang Binh, Ha Tinh and Nghe An, are not favorite tourist destinations like others nearby such as Danang, Hue, and Hoi An, so flooding has left little impact.
However, tour operators are concerned about the bad impact of the new super typhoon Megi, which might prompt tourists to cancel all tours to the region.
Fiditourist already feels the impact, as the company on Tuesday received a request from a big group of tourists for cancellation of a tour of the coastal city of Nha Trang.
“The tourists’ final decision has yet to come but we will lose more if the tour is cancelled because Vietnam Airlines is asking for full charges of the cancellation,” said Nguyen Ngoc An, head of the domestic department of Fiditourist.
