VietNamNet Bridge – Hoang Tuan Anh, Deputy Head of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), said that one of the priority tasks for 2007 was to raise the number of hotel rooms.

Vietnam now has 140,000 hotel rooms nationwide. However, travel firms still find it very difficult to arrange accommodation for tourists, even in non-tourism season. What are the reasons behind this?

I can give the exact number of hotel rooms. There are 42,000 rooms in 7,065 accommodation places. These include 25 five-star hotels, 64 four-star, 135 three-star and 1,000 one- or two-star hotels.
In the last few years, the demand for 3-5 star rooms has increased sharply as the result of the fast growing number of foreign tourists, while domestic tourists also want to use services of higher grade. There are only 45,000 high-grade rooms and this proves to be a small figure compared to the increased demand.
I must say that the development of the hotel system in Vietnam has not caught up with the development of the tourism industry. In 1990, Vietnam only received 1,150,000 tourists, including 150,000 foreign tourists, while the figure rose to 21mil last year, including 3.6mil foreign tourists.
How can Vietnam arrange enough rooms for six million foreign tourists and 25mil domestic tourists per year in the next three years as expected?
With the current investment pace, Vietnam will have 28,000 rooms more in the next three years, which means we will have 170,000 rooms in three years. However, we should anticipate that the number of tourists will increase more than expected. We are calling for investment in infrastructure and in hotels. In 2006, some VND620bil ($38.75mil) was spent on building infrastructure items to serve the tourism industry, and the figure will be raised to VND110bil ($6.87mil) this year.
How can Vietnam’s tourism industry cope with the difficulties caused by the lack of rooms in the immediate time?
Currently 70-80% of 3-5 star hotels can meet requirements, while tourists still complain about 1-2 star hotels. It is necessary to upgrade the quality of accommodations services. With the same conditions of facilities, clients will be more satisfied with hotels which can provide better services. We are planning to make inspection tours of one-star accommodations, and considering ‘giving stars’ to 2-5 star hotels. Besides, VNAT is also trying to develop a training college system in provinces and cities like Can Tho, Nha Trang, Da Lat and Binh Thuan, and speed up the implementation of the joint project with the EU on training staff for the tourism sector. The project costs Euro12mil.
You have said that VNAT is calling for investment in hotels. What are the key sectors that you want to lure investment to?
We aim to attract investment to high-grade 4-5 star hotels. The key areas for investment include HCM City, Hanoi, Hue, Da Nang, Quang Nam and Phu Quoc. In the north, Quang Ninh and Hai Phong will be the suitable places for making investments.
There are several ongoing projects on 5-star hotels in Hanoi, while in HCM City, several 4-star hotels are going to be upgraded into 5-star hotels. In other localities, investors have registered to develop big projects. We do believe that the number of 170,000 hotel rooms is within our reach.

Source: TBKTSG