HCM City (VNA) ♛- With an expanding room inventory and alot of projects scheduled to launch in the near future, the competition in theupscale hotel market will start to heat up, especially in the five-starsegment, according to the 2017 Vietnam Hotel Survey released on July 11.

The survey, done by Grant Thornton Vietnam for the last 14 years,provides financial, operational and marketing information for 2016 from a rangeof four- and five-star hotels and resorts. The number of tourists is expected to rise significantly this yearafter a lull in 2015 and a sharp increase of 26 percent last year, said TrinhKim Dung, director of advisory services at Grant Thornton Vietnam. Last year the country welcomed 72 million domestic andinternational visitors, higher than the target of 68.5 million visitors set bythe Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, Dung said at a press meeting onJuly 11. "The Vietnamese tourism industry recorded 10 millioninternational visitors and the highest annual increase of two million. As aresult, the performance of the hotel industry is expected to improve after aperiod of stagnation,” she said. To accommodate the increasing arrivals for leisure and recreation,41 new 3- to 5-star hotels with more than 8,700 rooms opened their doors lastyear. The total number of rooms has increased to more than 420,000, muchhigher than in neighbouring countries like Malaysia, Laos and Cambodia. The average room rate of upscale hotels last year saw a 1.3 percentincrease year-on-year to 88.1 USD. The rate for four-star rooms was 75 USD, a rise of 3.8 percent butstill far behind the 2014 level. Five-star rates again dropped slightly to 104.4 USD from 106.8 USDin 2015. Revenue per available room (RevPAR) increased in both starcategories: a 10 percent rise for four-star hotels to 51.4 USD, and 4.1 percentrise for five-star hotels to 68.7 USD. The hotel industry last year saw a recovery with occupancy rateincreased for high-end hotels. The average occupancy rose to 67.2 percent from 61.5 percent forfour-star hotels and to 68 percent from 62.7 percent for five-star hotels. Individual tourists, tour groups and business travellers togethermade up more than three quarters (77.6 percent) of total number of guestsstaying in high-end establishments last year. “Travel agents and tour operators remained the largest bookingchannel at high-end properties, accounting for 37.3 percent of reservations,”Dung said. This ratio has, however, seen a gradual decline over the years,and fell by 3.1 percentage points last year. The survey says that with the 4th Industry Revolution affectingall sectors of the economy with many high-end hoteliers are preparing for whatis to come, a notable increase was seen in the application of digitaltechnology by hotels. Last year, 67.3 percent used it compared to 49.3 percentthe previous year. Another 18.6 percent plan to get on the bandwagon this year or thenext with those who said they have not made any decision with regard to usingdigital technology dropped from 23.9 percent to 15.4 percent.-VNA