HANOI: The Construction Ministry has sent an official dispatch to the People’s Committee of Gia Lai Province to respond to a proposal from the locality on a coordinated solution to reduce airfare prices to a reasonable and stable level, aimed at improving the competitiveness of tourism in Vietnam and in the province.
In an effort to reduce airfares, the former Transport Ministry, now the Construction Ministry, issued a decision on Dec 31, which set a maximum price for basic economy class domestic air passenger transport services sold within Vietnam.
Vietnamese airlines have created flexible ticket prices ranging from low to high, depending on supply and demand, ticket conditions, ticket issuance time and service quality, ensuring that prices do not exceed the maximum prescribed price.
The Construction Ministry has also directed the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam to deploy solutions aimed at supplementing and balancing the capacity of Vietnamese airlines’ domestic and international routes, helping airlines to improve their operating capacity in accordance with demand.
The ministry confirmed that these solutions have brought positive results to the aviation market.
Specifically, Vietnamese airlines regularly operated 58 regular domestic routes in the first five months of this year, carrying out about 89,000 flights.
The domestic passenger volume through airports reached 30.4 million passengers.
This represents an increase of one route, more than 5,000 flights and an 8.8% rise in domestic passengers through airports compared with the same period last year.
At Phu Cat Airport in Gia Lai Province, Vietnamese airlines operated more than 3,300 flights connecting to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in the first five months of this year, with a volume of more than 532,000 passengers.
This indicates an increase of over 100 flights and a 1% rise in passengers compared with the same period last year.
Developing and attracting tourists was a comprehensive issue, linking many sectors including immigration, local tourism promotion policies, service quality and connections between travel companies and food service businesses, hotels and transportation, stated the Construction Ministry.
The main driving force in attracting and stimulating tourism must come from local policies.
For domestic tourism, passengers can also choose other means of transportation, such as railways, roads or inland waterways. — Viet Nam News/ANN
