HCMC short of rooms

Tourism authority says  HCMC needs around 27,000 more hotel rooms, with around 6,700 rooms in the three to five-star categories to accommodate some 7 million international tourists and 24 million domestic visits that  are forecast by 2020.

The city’s Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s Hotel Division head, Truong Vinh Tho, told local media the city is “gravely short” of hotel rooms.

“The hotel room demand has been calculated on tourist arrival growth, accommodation demand and the average length of stay,” he said.

The current growth is around 10% a year for international arrivals and a slightly lower growth for domestic tourism. However, the calculation is already off pace as it was based on growth rates of 8% and 6% for international and domestic tourists and performance in both categories has exceeded the most optimistic estimates.

The average length of stay is 2.6 days for international tourists and 2.5 days for domestic tourists.

The city currently has around 40,900 rooms, with 4,622 rooms in 61 three-star hotels, 2,114 rooms in 15 four-star hotels and 4,587 rooms in 14 five-star hotels. The majority of the city’s rooms are in no-star hotels of low quality.

Hotel expansion in the city has slowed down in recent years due to a capital shortage and slow site clearance.

“Several five-star hotel projects such as the expansion of the Majestic and Kim Do hotels and the construction of a Pullman hotel have fallen behind schedule. In addition, the number of investors interested in this sector are declining.”

Around 11 more hotels were supposed to open last year but only two materialised.

The city attracted over 1 million international tourists in the first quarter this year, and the average room occupancy rate at three- to five-star hotels reached 68% to 70%.

Sourced: ttrweekly