Hotels in nothern mountainous tourist district of Sapa have suffered a massive water shortage in the past weeks due to a prolonged drought.
Sapa has seen a rapid rise in hotel construction in recent years.
The water shortage has now been partially dealt with, thanks to the provisional water supply from other places, although the entire demand has not fully met, according to To Ba Hieu, vice chairman of Sapa Tourism Association.
Hieu noted that as Sapa is approaching the rainy season, the water shortage should be soon addressed. In the longer term, Sapa’s water supply, however, will still depend mainly on the government plan to build water plants, which yet to be implemented at the current stage.
Over the past few weeks, Sapa has experienced a prolonged shortage in water supply, which overall affected the lives of many local residents and hotel businesses there.
Sapa often goes through the issue of water shortage during April but this year the situation grew more severely. Pham Cao Vy, chairman of the Sapa Tourism Association, attributed one of the reasons behind such severe conditions to the climate change.
“The rapid growing number of hotels in Sapa is also another reason,” he said.
Despite the number of hotels has increased significantly, clean water projects have not been built on par with the actual demand.
The water shortage has dealt a blow to tourism business in Sapa, where many hotels faced with booking cancellations. Vy, nevertheless, noted that the cancel rate was not significant as it only happened to hotels without large-scale water tanks.
According to the People’s Committee of Lao Cai province, the water plant in Sapa, operated by Lao Cai Water Supply JSC, currently provides 6,000 cubic metres per day.
The actual demand for fresh water in the area, meanwhile, reaches 4,000 - 4,500 cubic metres per day and over 6,000 cubic metres at weekends. Four out of five water sources in the Sapa have dried up due to prolonged severe weather conditions.
Suoi Ho 2 is the only one source left but it also serves the area's agricultural purposes there. The authorities in Sapa has thus negotiated and reached an agreement with the locals to temporarily employ this source of water for household usages rather than for agricultural purposes for the time being.
Vy said that this agreement has helped Sapa temporarily deal with the water shortage and the water from Suoi Ho 2 can now meet up to 70-80 per cent of Sapa’s water demand.
Sapa Tourism Association has requested local residents to use water wisely and owners of hotels and accommodation facilities to come up with plans and inform tourists about the situation promptly.
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