USA Today, 8 September, 2006
Hyatt last year opened its first hotel in the country in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. InterContinental will open its first hotel in 2007 in Hanoi. Accor, with nine hotels, plans four more by 2008.
Starwood entered the country in 2003 and operates two Sheratons. Marriott operates two hotels, and Hilton, one.From 2000 to 2005, the number of rooms in Vietnam grew by 72 percent to 95,700, according to the Vietnamese government.
Western companies, for the most part, are building business hotels in big cities: Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. Beach-front resorts are slower to develop. Strengthening business ties with the West and Asia are boosting demand for good hotels. In the first eight months this year, the number of visitors grew 10 percent from a year earlier to about 2.5 million.Nearly 80 percent of the available rooms in four hotels in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City owned by France-based Accor have been filled this year, largely by business travelers from Asia."In the last two years, the growth in occupancy there was higher than any other Asian country," says Accor's Peter Hook. "Vietnam is hot."
The shortage of rooms in Hanoi will be felt in November when the city hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference that will draw thousands of diplomats, journalists and business people, Hook says.
