The Ministry of Planning and Investment will carry out inspections of tourism and recreational-property projects in the central city of Da nang and five other provinces to determine their feasibility, according to the Ministry’s plan for this yean

The provinces of Thua Thien Hue, Khanh Hoa, Quang Ninh, Lam Dong and Binh Thuan, as well as Danang, are considered “hotspots” because many licences have been issued for property developing projects.

But most of those projects, especially in Thua Thien Hue and Lam Dong, either remain on paper or have been delayed.

Lang Co Bay in central Thua Thien-Hue Province is a natural attraction for tourists. An inspection on tourism and recreational projects in the central city of Danang and five other areas has been called for to determine their feasibility. — VNA/VNS

In the 2001-04 period, many investors quickly registered projects to occupy land, but construction has not begun.According to the Chan May-Lang Co economic zone, 35 registered projects exist, but only nine are operating.

Projects still on paper include Lap An Resort and Golf Course, an infrastructure project for Saigon-Chan May Industrial and Non-Tariff Zone, and Bai Chuoi Tourism Area. They were issued licenses in the 2006-08 period.

Construction on some projects has been sparse. For example, the Diana Resort project was issued a license in 2007 but only the fence and watchman’s house have been built.

A resort project along Lang Co beach worth US$4.8 million was issued a license in 2006, but only wave-breakers have been built since that time.

Nguyen Que, deputy head of management board of Chan May-Lang Co economic zone, said slow implementation and delays were caused by a lack of capital.

Moreover, because of the banks’ high interest rate, the investors were reluctant to take out loans.

The People’s Committee of the Central Highland province of Lam Dong said for the 2006-10 period, a total of 236 tourism and resort projects in Dalat and the neighbouring region were registered, with registered capital totalling about VND46,500 billion ($2.3 billion).

Of those, 142 projects have been issued licenses, but only 65 projects have begun construction. Nineteen out of 65 projects have begun to operate.

For the Tuyen Lam Lake tourist zone alone, there are 30 registered projects with total investment capital of more than VND7,500 billion ($375 million). But only14 of that number are under construction. While the Ministry of Planning and Investment has asked local authorities to examine the feasibility of tourism property projects, the central province of Thua Thien-Hue has organised conferences to call for investment in tourism and resort projects.

They include the Hoi Dua resort tourist area covering an area of 100ha, a resort tourist area along the Dien Loc beach in Phong Dien District with an area of 200ha, and the Quang Cong – Quang Ngan eco-tourism area in Quang Dien District covering an area of 100ha.

Truong Van Thu, vice chairman of Lam Dong Province People’s Committee, said inspections of these areas would help local authorities examine and review the construction progress of projects.

The province issued a list of key projects that seek investment for the 2010-20 period. One of those was the Prenn Lake tourist zone project with a large scale of 1,000ha.

Source: VNS

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Hanoi Municipal People’s Committee and the Vietnam National Commission for UNESCO will organise a ceremony to grant UNESCO certificate to the saint Giong Festival as a world heritage in Hanoi on January 22.

The saint Giong Festival was the third cultural heritages in Vietnam recognised by UNESCO in 2010 along with the 82 doctorate steles in the Temple of Literature and Thang Long Royal Citadel.

It is an annual traditional festival held in many provinces across the country to commemorate the glorious victory of the legendary saint Giong, one of Vietnam’s Four Immortals, the four chief cult figures in the pantheon of genii worshiped by the ancient Vietnamese people.

The ceremony aims to promote the festival as well as the country and people to international friends and improve public awareness to preserve the priceless cultural value of the heritage.

Source: VOV

The Cham Sculpture Museum preserves sculpture items featuring the nation’s glorious period of culture and civilisation.

The museum is located at No2, Road 209, Danang City. It was built according to French archaeologist Henri Parmentier and completed in 1919. It became a place to preserve and research Cham sculpture in the central region.

The museum architecture uses both European and Cham motifs. It has been extended twice, but the character of the original architecture has been well preserved.

The first extension started in the early 30s and finished in 1936, with two new galleries providing display space for the objects added in the 20s and 30s.

Archaeologist Henri Parmentier arranged the display in order of the areas where the sculptures were found.

The second extension began in 2002 with the two-storey buildings covering another 1000 square metres. The new buildings provide more space for display, storage, archives, restoration workshop and offices for staff.

The display place includes Quang Tri, Quang Nam and Quang Ngai corridors, Tra Kieu, My Son, Dong Duong, Thap Mam-Binh Dinh and extension.

There are different ways of arranging Cham sculpture items, depending on type of materials, date, and content.

This was the first sculpture museum in Vietnam (early 20^th century). Displayed items feature cultural, spiritual and ritual lives of the Cham people.

Most works depict Hinduism genii and others reflect the people’s daily lives.

Source: VNN

Vietnam hotel developers are now beginning to manage properties under their own brand names, setting off a new trend in Vietnam’s hospitality industry.

The Ocean Hospitality company, which has listed 100 million of its shares with the Hanoi Stock Exchange, opened last Wednesday its new property, the US$35 million StarCity Hotel Saigon, on HCM City’s Nguyen Van Troi Street.

Ha Van Tham, chairman of the Ocean Group that owns Ocean Hospitality, said this was the first hotel to bear the StarCity brand name, which the company has created specially for four-star hotels and resorts.

“Over the next two to three years, we will complete seven additional hotels under the StarCity brand in Hanoi, Hoi An, Nha Trang and Ho chi minh City,” said Tham, adding that the company would hold stakes of at least 75 per cent in these properties.

Four-star properties would be the focus of the company but other brand names would also be created for five-, three- and two-star properties, he said.

For instance, he said a resort in Hoi An would be co-branded Novotel StarCity. Novotel, a brand that belongs to the well-known hotel management firm Accor, will help OceanHospitality improve the skills of its staff.

The company has an ambitious plan to expand its brand to Japan and China and negotiations are under way with a Chinese partner for the purpose.

A vocational training centre is also in the pipeline to ensure supply of a qualified workforce not just for the company but the industry as a whole, but no further details have been released yet.

Property developer Vincom Corp has also launched its owned brand, Vinpearl. The first resort bearing this name has already begun operations in Nha Trang. This year three more will open in Danang, Hoi An and Nha Trang, the last one being a six-star hotel inside the Vinpearl Nha Trang resort, according to chairman Le Khac Hiep. With the three new developments, VinPearl hotels will have almost 1,000 rooms to offer. The group is developing several other properties, all of which will be placed under hotel management company VinPearl Land.

Initially Vincom had contracted with well-known international hotel management companies for Vinpearl Nha Trang. “We saw that only a few key positions were held by foreign experts and the majority of the staff were Vietnamese so we thought why not a management team of our own as we would have various projects around the country,” chairman Le Khac Hiep said.

“And we achieved better performance with our hotel management arm Vinpearl Land, revealed via higher occupancy and guests’ satisfaction,” he said, noting that the company also targeted offering management services to hotel owned by other developers in the future.

Deputy general director Tran Hung Viet of SaigonTourist, a major holding company in the country’s travel and hospitality market, said he also saw the value of a hotel chain under its own brand name and management.

However, he also noted that their major properties like Majestic, Rex Saigon and Hotel Continental Saigon in HCM City had a long history and would retain their names.

The company has been developing hotels and resorts around the country and all of them (mostly four-star) have the prefix “Saigon”. Thus, the properties are called Saigon – Qui Nhon and Saigon Halong and so on to make it a chain.

Currently SaigonTourist maintains a general department in charge of business, marketing and management. Viet said his company had a long-term plan to develop a hotel management affiliate, but not in the immediate future.

Source: VNS

Last year, several luxury  Vietnam hotels pledged to develop new properties in the country, adding to a hotel surge that began 10 years ago.

The development contributed to a 36% boost in visitors in the first half of 2010, making Vietnam fourth in the world in tourism growth, according to the World Tourism Organization.

Meanwhile, several river cruise operators say that demand for Mekong River trips is pushing them to develop or rapidly expand cruise programs there.

While those sectors have only recently discovered Vietnam, the upscale and expedition sector of the cruise industry was on the forefront of travel to the country, with several first visiting Vietnam in the early 1990s.

Even back then, when its inland tourism infrastructure was lacking, Vietnam’s 2,140-mile coastline made it geographically suited to cruise exploration.

Recent tourism development has benefited the cruise industry, bringing needed infrastructure and excursion opportunities. But the same development also threatens to change much of what visitors find so charming about Vietnam.

“The demand for Vietnam is very high among sophisticated travelers because the destination offers a glimpse into ‘old Asia,’” said Mark Conroy, president of Regent Seven Seas Cruises, which began operating in Vietnam when the country’s ports opened in 1992.

Vietnam is not as developed as many Asian cruise destinations, such as Hong Kong, Singapore and, increasingly, Shanghai and Beijing.

This has traditionally made Vietnam challenging to travel to by land, but it also enabled it to retain a pristine, old-Asia ambience that one well-traveled passenger on a recent Silversea Cruises itinerary likened to “China in the 1970s.”

Silversea has been offering cruises to Vietnam since 1996. It is among several cruise lines that say Vietnam’s overall tourism infrastructure had greatly improved.

Steve Tucker, Silversea’s vice president of field sales, said the country was doing an “excellent job cultivating cruise business.”

“Every year we notice significant improvements,” Tucker said. “When we first started visiting Vietnam, tour buses were of very poor quality and had no air conditioning. Currently, buses are much more modern and significantly more efficient. Roads leading to popular tourist spots are now newly paved and in better condition. Public restrooms are more plentiful and in better condition.”

Tucker also noted that the language skills of Vietnamese guides have greatly improved.

“It’s not uncommon now to find guides speaking multiple languages,” he said. “In the past, we were hard pressed to find even an English-speaking guide. Having guides that are multilingual is extremely important to our international clientele looking for private tour arrangements.”

Another improvement Tucker cited is faster port clearance times and customs procedures, which enable passengers to disembark soon after arriving.

“Years ago, it would take some time before our guests were allowed to go ashore,” he recalled.

Travel agents say cruise ships exposed people to Vietnam, and now they want to go back for land stays.

“Cruises have helped give more awareness to the destination,” said Susan Reder of Frosch Classic Cruise and Travel in California, who herself first visited Vietnam many years ago on a cruise. Today, she said, the destination is “definitely hot.”

“There are so many new properties opening up in Vietnam,” Reder said. “It’s a fabulous country, so interesting; wonderful people and the best food.”

Cruise lines say demand for Vietnam is as strong as ever and, in fact, still growing.

Silversea said interest in Vietnam has grown even as demand for other Asian destinations has diminished.

“Indonesia used to be the hot Asia destination,” Tucker said. “Now it’s Vietnam.”

Adam Snitzer, vice president of marketing for Seabourn Cruises, said Vietnam was one of the line’s most popular destinations not only in Asia but worldwide. He also noted that Seabourn cruises go to Vietnamese destinations that can be “challenging if done by land.”

Seabourn, which has been calling in Vietnam since the early 1990s, recently added Sihanoukville in Cambodia to the line’s 2012 Vietnam/Thailand cruises in order to offer access to Angkor in Cambodia, Snitzer said, noting that its passengers “do seek new and more exotic destinations.”

Despite continuing developments, the lines also cite some challenges there.

Conroy noted there were “some bureaucratic issues with the government” that passengers rarely see. He added that Regent’s main challenge can be getting people to Vietnam.

“The biggest challenge in the area are the distances and the cost to get there,” Conroy said, noting that with flight time up to 24 hours, many people want to travel in business class, which, depending on capacity and demand, “can be expensive.”

He also said that unlike in Europe, Regent can’t depend on the local market to fill a portion of the ship.

“In Asia, for luxury we have not seen the demand,” Conroy said, adding that Regent’s Asian guests mostly travel in Europe or Alaska.