Consulting the services at Hue Villa Hotel
Struggling to seek guests
Mr. Nguyen Huu Binh, Chairman of the Association of Accommodation, said that 2018 was the year with the biggest shift in the tourists’ demand. Previously, the demand for traveling focused on using 2 - 3 star hotels, but currently on 4-5 star hotels.
That was why in 2018, at one time, the 4-5 star hotel rooms in Hue were inadequate for tourists, which was without precedent. In terms of business factors, that the room capacity of 4 - 5 star hotels attained about 50 - 60% was considered successful.
In contrast to the profit-making 4-5 star hotels was the struggle of the hotels of 3 stars or less to maintain and seek the guest quantity. The owner of a 2-star hotel on Nguyen Thai Hoc Street confided that compared with the previous years, the number of bookings decreased sharply, the capacity was only about 30-40%, sometimes about 20%. According to this hotel owner, when talking with the travel partners, she knew that this was because when booking tours, tourists required 4-5 star hotels, not because the travel partners converted the accommodation establishments for tourists.
Ms. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Quynh, Director of Hue Smile Travel Company, said that quality will be a key factor to satisfy tourists. For the present tours, the standard in accommodation service must be at least 3-star hotel; very few travel operators organize the tour with 2-star hotels.
Mr. Le Ngoc Sanh, Chief of the Office of Thua Thien-Hue Department of Tourism analyzed the economic development dominates all the activities of tourism. Specifically, in the past, tourists went traveling for the purpose of knowledge. Currently, they require delicious food, beautiful accommodation and the best services although the expenses can be many times higher.
Another problem to discuss is the quality of accommodation services. According to Chief of the Office of Thua Thien-Hue Department of Tourism, for a long time, the process of building hotels and motels has hardly any orientation. Most small hotels only focus on building lots of rooms without paying attention to quality.
The orientation in construction is very difficult; in fact, from the process of applying for permission to build to the completion of building a hotel, individuals and organizations do those on their own. Only when they do accommodation business, do they come to the department for permission, and it was too late. There are also the hotel owners that consult with the sector when investing and building hotels, but this number is in single figures.
The orientation of the tourism industry is to focus on building quality accommodation services; however, the development process is not as easy as desired. While high-class accommodation establishments are under construction and calling for investment, the service of homestay, motels, and cheap tourist hotels continue to grow, increasing the number of rooms of inferior quality.
Responding to demand
Talking to tourist businesses in late 2018, Mr. Le Huu Minh said, over the past 10 years, Hue's accommodation services developed at a snail’s pace. Ten years ago, there were only 28 3-5 star hotels, and so far only 1 more hotel – that is, Vincom Hotel. Particularly for the 5-star hotels in Hue, which own nearly 1,300 rooms, compared with other localities with developed tourism, this number remains small.
According to the Department of Tourism, the province currently has 578 accommodation establishments with the total room number of 10,663. Among them, there are 201 hotels with 7,518 rooms; the 1-5 star hotel number is 111 establishments with 5,178 rooms. Hue's orientation to 2020 is to strive to increase by additional 5,000 rooms to attain about 15,000 rooms.
Mr. Le Huu Minh said that the good signal was that some behind-schedule projects in recent years have been restarted such as the construction and renovation of Thuan Hoa Hotel at No. 7 Nguyen Tri Phuong Street, with the VND-400-billion investment total expected to be carried out in 2019 and the following years. My An Hot Water Resort Project has been resumed after a period of difficulties. Its investment capital of more than VND 500 billion is also ready to deploy in 2019 and so on, promising to increase the number of accommodations s and create the quality of accommodation service for Hue.
Mr. Le Ngoc Sanh judged that the growth rate of accommodation services in Hue was slow because of the little attraction to investors and the capital recovery time slower than other places. However, if impatient, Hue will be like some other destinations. Hue must strive to increase the number of tourists to ensure the room quality because the number of hotel rooms is too numerous. Also, Hue is striving to increase the number of rooms to ensure the number of tourists.
The issue of accommodation service development is of the utmost importance when tourism is forecast to continue to rise in the coming years. Mr. Le Ngoc Sanh said that if accommodation establishments do not improve service quality, they will be very difficult to attract guests in the future.
Reality proves that if the hotels with 2-3 stars are well invested in facilities, their business can still go well because travel operators always choose quality. The hotels whose quality is not guaranteed will remove themselves from the competition in guest attraction
On account of the used-up land fund to build big hotels in Hue City center, the two solutions Hue needs to adopt in parallel are to continue the call for investment in high-class accommodation facilities and to orient, develop small-scale hotels reaching the standard of 4-5 stars.
Story and photo: DUC QUANG