Hotel room rates in Hanoi and HCMC, at around $110 a night, are the second most expensive in Southeast Asia behind only Singapore. Real estate services firm CBRE Vietnam said at a recent conference that the performance of the four- and five-star hotel segments was very strong in 2018 due to limited supply but constantly increasing demand.
By the end of the year the average rent in this segment reached $112.6 in Hanoi and $114.1 in HCMC. High-end rooms in Hanoi number 7,770, of which two thirds are in the five-star category, and their average occupancy rate last year was 78.4 percent.
Most of them are concentrated in the downtown area and Ba Dinh, a central district where most government offices and embassies are located.
CBRE said in recent years sharing economy models like AirBnB have been trending, with AirBnB supply in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City topping 24,000 units compared to 17,500 four- to five-star hotel rooms.
“However, despite the rapid growth of this model, room-sharing has not a clear impact on business in the four-five-star segment.”
As of 2017 there were 118 five-star hotels/resorts in Vietnam, almost twice the number in 2013.
They had an occupancy rate of over 75 percent, 5 percentage points up from 2016, according to global consulting firm Grant Thornton.
Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) statistics show an upsurge in the number of foreign visitors to Vietnam in the last few years. Last year 15.5 million came to the country, a 20 percent rise from 2017.