HotelChatter

Tags: Hotel News / Vietnam Hotels / Accor Hotels / → All Tags

French Hotel Chain Invades Vietnam

by Tim L. | March 6, 2008 at 11:01 AM | 0 Comments

French hotel operator Accor announced this week that they would be ramping up their presence in Vietnam, adding 12 hotels to their current 8 by the end of 2010.

Forget any visions of unspoiled hill tribe regions in the far north: the 150-room Pullman Sapa Resort and the 200-room Pullman Lao Cai Hotel are on the way. Heavily touristed Ha Long Bay will get its first international hotel: Novotel Ha Long Bay, opening this summer.

Two new Mercure brand hotels will open in Hanoi, scheduled for 2009 and 2010--the first Mercure hotels in the country. More Novotels are on the way, including one in the beach resort area of Nha Trang.

Surprisingly, there were no high-end Sofitel hotels in the announcement, despite a lack of choices for luxury travelers and a booming export economy attracting plenty of foreign business travelers. Vietnam attracted 4.2 million foreign visitors in 2007, an annual increase of over 17 percent.

Still these will probably not be the last of the announcements: Accor opened an office in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) on Wednesday.