The average hotel room price in Vietnam remains 10 per cent to 15 per cent higher than that in some regional countries despite efforts to reduce prices to lure travelers recently, the state media said, quoting Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.
Just hotels in big cities like Hanoi and HCM City have reduced their hotel room price, while hotels and resorts elsewhere still keep the price or just offer fractional cut, tour operators said.
Local room prices at the beginning of this year were 20 per cent to 30 per cent higher than those in the region. However, as many local hotels have slashed hotel rates by 15 per cent to 25 per cent to cope with the decline in international arrivals, the gap has been narrowed down but is still higher than regional rivals' rates, the Hotel Department under the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism says in a just-released report.
According to the report, occupancy is going down especially in HCM City in Hanoi. Average occupancy at many hotels in the two cities has fallen by 10 per cent to 20 per cent, while bookings for the coming months have also tumbled.
“The average occupancy of hotels in Vietnam is to reach around 49 per cent in this year, down by 2 percentage points compared to 2007,” says the report.
In Jan-Nov, Vietnam's tourism welcomed 3.9 million foreign tourist arrivals, up 1.1 per cent on year thanks to strong increase in arrivals in initial months of this year. The number of international tourists started to fall since the middle of 2008.
The hotel department said the country has around 10,400 tourist accommodations with over 207,000 rooms, including 31 five-star hotels with nearly 8,200 rooms, 90 four-star hotels with nearly 11,000 rooms, 175 three-star hotels with over 12,500 rooms, and 710 two-star hotels with 27,000 rooms. (Economy & Urban Area, VietNamNet)
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