HCM City authorities have decided to pour more investment into fundamental infrastructure to accelerate the growth of the tourism sector in the 2010-20 period to 20 per cent from 12.3 per cent in the 2007-10 period, the local top tourism official said.
“The investment for the coming years will focus on key infrastructure like the hotel network and tourist attractions,” Director of the municipal Tourism Department Dong Thi Kim Vui said last Wednesday.
The department will combine with the HCM City Institute for Economic Research and the Department of Planning and Investment to devise a map on the hotel development until 2020.
The map will give investors a clear view about the trend of hotel development in the city in the years to come, including a list of projects calling for investment.
“Though the number of hotel rooms in HCM City accounts for around 10 per cent of the country's total, the city is facing a critical shortage of hotel rooms and other basic infrastructure facilities for tourism due to the lack of a transparent policy and a development scheme for the sector in the past years,” she explained.
The southern metropolis welcomed 240,000 tourists last month, up 16 per cent year-on-year, taking the total number of international visitors during the January-October period to 2.14 million. The total tourism revenue in the period amounted to over VND17.2 trillion (US$1.07 billion), up 32 per cent year-on-year.
The city expects to greet 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.
HCM City now has some 22,000 hotel rooms, including some 3,600 of five-star standard, 1,300 four-star rooms, 1,600 three-star rooms, and 3,400 two-star rooms. The department estimates that the city will lack some 14,500 standard rooms by 2010 including 7,000 rooms of three- to five-star ratings. (VietNamNet, SGT)
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