Ho Chi Minh City tourism is developing rapidly. However, the lack of luxury rooms still remains. The city’s tourism department is striving to have an extra 6,000 luxury rooms by 2010 as a development requirement.

Ho Chi Minh City now has 40 three-star and above hotels, with 6,624 rooms. Of this, 11 are five-star, accounting for 60 percent of the total of rooms. These hotels are mainly located in Districts 1, 3, and 5. Compared to large tourism hubs such Thailand and Malaysia, the number of high-end hotels in Ho Chi Minh City is small (Bangkok has 29 five-star hotels and Kaula Lumpur has 28)

Carrying out the direction of the city’s People’s Committee, the city’s Department of Tourism coordinated with related agencies to survey premises in the city to propose as sites for new high-end hotels.

Mrs. Dong Thi Kim Vui, Director of the city’s Department of Tourism said: “At present, the tourism department is surveying 23 premises to invest in the building of high-end hotels. As scheduled, the city will have another 6,000 high-end rooms by 2010 and we will continue to survey other places to build luxury accommodation centers in the 2011-2012 period.”

Coordinating with tourist agents to increase the number of tourists in accommodation centers, the city needs to upgrade and make utmost use of current hotels, said Mrs. Vui. Particularly, the accommodation centers under the State management such as the government’s guest-house and the assembly’s guest-house need to be improved for common tourism development.

 Source: CPV