The tourism department of Ho Chi Minh City has proposed 21 feasible locations for developing hotels until 2020, a move to provide accommodations for an increasing number of visitors to the city.
More than half the sites are located in Districts 1 and 3 within the city center. The smaller locations cover nearly 940 square meters, the larger locations, about 10,000 square meters.
The tourism authority has worked with related departments such as the department of planning and investment and the department of natural resources and environment to create the list.
“We expect these locations to be developed into three to five-star hotels,” Truong Vinh Tho, head of the hotel management division under the city's tourism department said, adding that devising this list is one thread in the department's long-term plan to develop the city's hotel system between the current year and 2020.
A recent report of the authority showed that the number of international arrivals in the city, excluding tourists traveling domestically, went up from 1.1 million in 2000 to 2.35 million in 2006 but the average number of rooms available grew a mere 34 per cent in the period.
“Demand is much stronger than supply so we must be faced with a shortage of rooms,” Tho said, reckoning that the city will need more than 12,000 rooms by 2010, including 7,000 of three to five-star standards, to cater to 7.3 million tourists, including 2.8 million international travelers.
“If the city carried out the long-term plan of the tourism department and developed hotels at half the suggested locations, it could have 6,000 more rooms for visitors in the coming years,” Tho revealed.
Currently, the southern metropolis has highest number of luxury hotels in Vietnam with around 3,600 five-star rooms, 1,281 four-star rooms, 1,671 three-star rooms, 3,394 two-star rooms, 2,027 one-star rooms, and 10,068 other rooms.
The city expects to welcome 2.65 million international visitors and earn tourism revenue of VND19.5 trillion (US$1.2 billion) in 2007, up 10 per cent and 20 per cent on-year respectively. (SGT, VietNamNet)
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