Tourism businesses in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region experienced weak sales over the long holiday weekend due to waterway transport service suspension and booking cancelations caused by torrential rains brought by Super Typhoon Saola, the third storm to affect Vietnam this year.

In Kien Giang Province, a high-speed boat service linking the mainland with Nam Du and Phu Quoc, two island destinations off the coast of Kien Giang, was halted from Saturday, driving down the number of visitors to the islands.

Ly Thua Loi, vice-general director of Golden Link Tourism JSC, based in the provincial capital city of Rach Gia, said guests canceled around 30 percent of the booked tours to Nam Du.

Nguyen Thi Tu Quyen, owner of a hostel in the province’s Kien Hai District that collaborated with a tour operator to offer lodging services, said her business was significantly affected as guests canceled their booked tours.

As a result of the ferry and high-speed boat service suspension, guests scrapped bookings for 15 rooms at her hostel, which serves a higher volume of visitors on normal weekends than this public holiday, Quyen elaborated.

Some islands in An Thoi Ward, Phu Quoc City served little to no visitors, since motorboat tours to these islands were suspended due to the bad weather, according to Diep Nguyen Quoc, owner of Phu Quoc Ocean Pearl Island, a tourist site in An Thoi.

Tourism businesses in the province offered special deals to woo tourists but their sales fell short of their expectations. Therefore, several of them had to downsize staff members assigned to work over the holiday or cut their working hours.

Data from the provincial steering committee for natural disaster prevention and control showed that after two days of the waterway transport service suspension, around 11,880 guests were staying in Nam Du and Phu Quoc.

The unpleasant weather was also seen as a drag on the tourism sector in other Mekong Delta provinces.

Dinh Van Chac, director of the Cam Mountain tourist site in neighboring An Giang Province, revealed that the site served a lower-than-expected number of visitors, at around 7,100 in the first two days of the four-day holiday, which lasts from September 1 to 4, and booked a mere VND136 million (US$5,480) in entrance ticket sales.

Statistics from the Department of Culture, Sports, and Tourism in Ca Mau Province showed that tourism sites in this southernmost province welcomed over 16,100 tourist arrivals between Saturday and Sunday, down 3.8 percent year on year.

Tourism service providers in Ca Mau stayed ready to serve visitors during the holiday, but many travel agencies called off tours due to the impact of the typhoon, a tourism official in Ca Mau said.

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