Khanh Hoa province’s Nha Trang City is famous for its beautiful coastline. However, it is not the only element to attract tourists as Nha Trang also has premium tourism services, with rich and unique gastronomy.
Naming the cuisine
Building a brand name for a cuisine is not easy, because it not only affirms the product grade but also represents the makers, ideas and the land. According to tourism enterprises in Nha Trang, in order to build gastronomic trademark to improve the competitiveness of Khanh Hoa’s tourism products and services, governing bodies should help tourism companies create recipes for new dishes specific to Nha Trang-Khanh Hoa cuisine such as My Tho noodle, Hue beef noodle soup and Hoi An vermicelli, combined with documents and pictures to prove that those dishes are unique to the province.
In addition, Khanh Hoa’s gastronomic culture is diversified with many famous dishes such as Ninh Hoa meat roll, Dien Khanh steamed pancake, Nha Trang rice spaghetti and Ninh Hoa fish noodle soup. Each dish brings a specific feature of the village it comes from. Red Lantern Restaurant owner said that Nha Trang’s favourite dishes include rice spaghetti, fish noodle soup, grilled meat roll and bread. The representative of Yasaka – Saigon - Nha Trang Joint Venture Company said with the feature of seaborne tourism, Nha Trang introduces foods and drinks with deep hallmarks of the coastal province. In order to create unique dishes, Yasaka - Saigon – Nha Trang Hotel has launched a contest to seek and collect rural foods of the province and formulate them into local specialities.
During festivals, Yasaka - Saigon – Nha Trang Hotel also introduces food and drink programmes such as “Popular summer dishes programme” or other food and drink events such as “Banh Tet” Festival and “Banh Canh Thach Sanh” festival. Especially, a “Fish Barbecue” with many kinds of tasty fish is indispensable on the menu when tourists visit Nha Trang. Aiming to promote product diversification, the hotel introduced a programme called “Swallow Dish Eve” featuring famous local specialities such as swallow’s nest and abalone delivered in a unique serving style.
Along with Yasaka - Saigon – Nha Trang Hotel, another restaurant in Nha Trang City is also collecting methods to cook rice noodle and fried fish, managing the production and display of these dishes in a luxury restaurant to ensure the best food safety for local and foreign tourists. These products will help bring a cuisine trademark to Nha Trang - Khanh Hoa Tourism.
Improving Hotel Quality
In recent years, hotels and guest houses in Khanh Hoa have grown rapidly in quantity, scale and service quality. However, it is a concern that hotels should enhance their competitiveness and business efficiency in the integration period. By the end of 2006, the province had 29 new accommodations for tourists with 588 rooms, bringing the total number of hotels to 349, with 8,279 rooms. Particularly, two hotels are graded five-star with 351 rooms, three four-star hotels with 396 rooms, five three-star hotels with 382 rooms, 32 two-star hotels with 1,120 rooms, 69 one-star hotels with 1,725 rooms, and 156 one-star hotels with 2,340 rooms. The remaining 82 facilities are not yet ranked, with a remarkable number of 1,965 rooms.
Large scale and modern tourist accommodation facilities have become more popular in recent years. Many units have expanded their scale, upgraded equipment, and improved service quality to raise the star-ranking for their hotels. This year, along with 29 1-2-star hotels becoming operational, some 3-5-star large hotels including Phuong Dong - Nha Trang Hotel, Novotel Nha Trang Hotel and Vinpearl Land Resort have been built along Tran Phu Street and other nearby roads. Many hotels and resorts have established high quality, internationally recognised standards, raising available accommodation in Nha Trang - Khanh Hoa to a new level.
In accordance with the master plan for Khanh Hoa tourism development until 2010 and 2020, the province is forecast to need 3,100 more rooms by 2010, and another 8,700 rooms by 2015. Khanh Hoa needs to pour capital into an additional 11,200 rooms by 2020 (from the figure of 2015). So the province expects to invest in a total of 23,000 hotel rooms. Meanwhile, luxury 4-5 star rooms meeting the demand of rich travellers are still limited; only 626 such rooms are available, making up 8.8 per cent of the total. Therefore, according to Tourism Research and Development Institute, Khanh Hoa province should pay great attention to building and developing 4-5-star hotels in the coming years, raising the number of rooms to about 12 per cent by 2010 and 20 per cent by 2020.
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