Tourists coming to Halong Bay from May 2012 might not recognize what they have seen on their favorite movie of Halong Bay or their travel agency brochure…

Indeed, the board of management of Halong Bay has recently announced to all cruise operators that all boats cruising the bay of the descending dragon shall be repainted in white except for the dragon heads junks, sending the image of traditional wooden junks to the past.

The reason invoked by the board of management is the necessity of creating a unique image for the boats sailing in Halong bay after the bay recently received international recognition as a new wonder of the world. The boats that wouldn’t follow this decision would lose their license.

After this decision was made official by the board of management of Halong Bay, a unanimous reaction of surprise and disagreement was felt among cruise operators in Halong Bay. Indeed, the association for Halong bay tourism boats sent a letter to the board of management to oppose the decision.

The reasons raised by the members of the association are the costs involved in such operation and the loss of Halong bay’s traditional brown wooden boats. Indeed, painting a boat in white costs between 30 and 40 million VND depending on the size of the boat, and about 500 boats in Halong Bay are concerned by this decision. The bill is even bigger as Halong Bay knows at the moment its high season for tourism and painting the boats requires stopping them at a time when most of the companies reach an occupancy rate of 70%.

In terms of image, cruise operators have been opposing the idea of losing the traditional brown wooden junks with brown sails to white boats. The brown wooden junks are a tradition of Halong bay whereas white boats refer to international yachts and big cruise ships and imposing a unique color could be misleading for the guests.

As a result to this fierce opposition from Halong bay cruise operators to create a branding image of Halong Bay boats through the white color and after a meeting organized with the association of Halong bay boats, the Quang Ninh’s people committee decided to come back on this decision and impose the use of white color for some details only.

Right after this decision, the association for Halong Bay boats has expressed its relief. Mr Doan Van Dung, chief of the association said that cruise operators in Halong bay “are now not facing the financial burden of following the authorities’ order, because it would have cost them tens of millions of dong to repaint their boats and been a time consuming process as well”.

However, a decision is still to be taken on the percentage of each boat that should be repainted in white. Many people fear that Halong Bay boats would still lose their uniqueness after this decision and that it doesn’t contribute to development of tourism in Halong Bay. John, a British tourist interviewed on Bai Chay tourism wharf explains: “people coming to Halong Bay don’t expect to see hundreds of boats painted the same way, with the same color. Taking this kind of decision helps erasing each boat’s identity in order to create a general image for Halong Bay, it’s counterproductive. We lose tradition to marketing.”

An official announcement on the exact terms of this decision is to be made in the next few days.