Tourism investment booms in central Vietnam

Scheduled to open in 2010, the Hyatt Regency Danang Resort will offer 255 rooms as well as 150 houses and 30 two-story villas for sale.

The project is located on a prime piece of real estate near the Da Nang International Airport (just 15-mitute drive by car) and three UNESCO World Heritage sites: the ancient town of Hoi An (10 km), the My Son Cham ruins (40 km), and the former feudal capital of Hue (80 km).

Grahame Carder, Asia Pacific marketing vice president for the Hyatt Hotels and Resorts, said Da Nang’s Non Nuoc Beach and Ngu Hanh Son (Five Elements Mountain) made the city a prime location for big projects.

The new Hyatt will be nestled between the mountains and the beach, a combination which he said was extremely difficult to find.

The central region’s era

Hyatt Regency will be the third five-star project in Da Nang, Vietnam’s third-largest city, after the Furama Resort Danang and the newer Green Plaza Hotel.

This number is still modest compared to the southern metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City and the northern capital of Hanoi, which are home to 11 and nine five-star hotels respectively.

However, according to a number of hotel managers andexperts, while Hanoi and HCMC have attracted many luxury hotel projects, the central region’s beautiful beaches are ideal for high-end resorts.

Peter Ryder, general director of Indochina Capital, said his company planned to build three more commercial and service complexes in Da Nang and neighboring Quang Nam Province over the next three years.

Indochina Capital has so far invested $250 million in central region projects including the Nam Hai Resort ($60 million), the Montgomerie Links golf course complex ($60 million), the Indochina Riverside Towers ($30 million) and the Hyatt Regency ($100 million).

Another fund management company, VinaCapital, recently broke ground on a $325 million commercial complex in Da Nang, slated to be the largest such facility in central Vietnam.

It would be the company’s fourth project in the city, bringing the company’s total investment in Da Nang projects to some $800 million.

The Vu Chau Long Real Estate Joint Stock Company introduced its Danang Center project at a real estate exhibition at the HCMC International Exhibition Convention Center earlier this month.

The 420-room, five-star hotel in the heart of the city is scheduled for completion by 2011.

Daewon Cantavil Company, an arm of South Korea’s Daewon group, began work on the Da Phuoc international urban complex project in Da Nang late last month.

D-City, as the project is called, will consist of an 18-hole golf course, a luxury hotel and resort complex, a 33-storybuilding with 8,500 apartments for rent, a park, a school, a theater and a commercial and cultural center.

This project is expected to take 10 years to build.

Additionally, the US-based firm Oaktree has recently presented a plan to spend $4.5-5 billion building the Lang Van Resort in Da Nang after surveying the investment environment in the central coast city.

Statistics from the Vietnam Administration of Tourism’s Hotel Division show that by late March this year there were some 100 tourism projects either being implemented or in negotiations from Quang Binh to Binh Thuan provinces, including 60 on the 30-km coastline from Da Nang to Quang Nam province alone.

Tran Minh Ca, chairman of Quang Nam People’s Committee, said tourism authorities would focus on three major tasks this year: calling for investment in large tourism complex projects, enhancing the My Son Cham ruins’ tourism potential, and taking advantage of the area’s stunning natural beauty – lakes, waterfalls, forests and mountains - as well as the region’s traditional cultural features.

Phan Huu Thang, chief of the Foreign Investment Department under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, said the flow of foreign investment in the hotel sector has been increasing considerably over the last few years, especially in the central region.

However, he emphasized that to attract more large projects like Hyatt Regency and Oaktree’s Lang Van, the country needs to improve infrastructure and living conditions.

Source: TBKTSG