Danang says no worry about hotel room oversupply

Danang will have an additional 1,800 new hotel rooms this year, the biggest growth compared to other parts of the country, but the central coast city has shown little concern over a possible oversupply of guest rooms.
Ngo Quang Vinh, director of the city’s Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said that with rapid growth in hotels in recent years, businesses are afraid that the city would face an imbalance between supply and demand in the coming time.
However, he noted, hotels in Danang are still doing good business, and supply would not exceed demand if the city held tourism events to attract tourists.
“Last year, average room occupancy reached 63-65% with hotels of three- to five-star standards posting higher occupancy. I think hotel business in Danang is in the first stage of development, so it is holding great growth potential,” he told the Daily on the sidelines of the meeting on Danang’s new tourism products held in HCMC last week.
Danang had 6,089 hotel rooms in 2010 and the figure surged to 10,570 rooms at 326 hotels last year. It is estimated that the number of rooms will rise by around 5,000 by 2015.
There have been many famous hotel brands entering into Danang, such as Pulchra Resort, InterContinental, Melia and Brilliant.
Vinh said events like firework performance, international marathon race, the new cable car system at Ba Na Hills and new air services would help bring more tourists to the city. Danang will start serving flights from Hong Kong from March 28 and Bangkok from May as well as other chartered flights from China’s Chengdu and Fujian.
However, the forecast concerning the excessive investments which may lead to an abundant supply of guest rooms still needs careful consideration. “I think the point is we need to carefully study the core market and the quality. If a hotel was small and of low quality, tourists would not choose to stay there. That’s the issue, not an oversupply,” said Vinh.
Currently, there are many air services connecting Danang with domestic and international destinations. If regular and chartered flights were not taken into account, Danang would have 30 domestic flights operated by Vietnam Airlines, VietJetAir and Jetstar Pacific a day.
The city got nearly 2.7 million tourists last year, up 12% from the previous year, with international tourists accounting for nearly 631,000.
This year, Danang will organize several tourism events. Among these, the Danang International Fireworks Competition 2013 will take place on April 29-30 with the participation of Russia, the U.S., Japan, Italy and Vietnam teams, and around 30,000 admission tickets would be sold at VND200,000-300,000 per ticket.
The city would be hosting the Danang International Marathon held by U.S.-based World Marathon Tour Inc. late this year with some 2,000 people expected to take part.
The third cable car system at Ba Na Mountain consisting of 86 cabins will officially put into operation on March 29, enabling visitors to move straight to the top of the mountain instead of stopping halfway to change to another cable car system. The investment for this project amounts to 30 million euros.