What colour should i paint my room

A hotel put up on sale

On just one real estate website on February 22 many ads were listed.

A 4-star hotel on Vo Nguyen Giap street, 600 square meters, with 19 stories, 125 rooms and 2 conference rooms is offered at VND440 billion.

Hotels on the major streets of Ha Bong, Tran Bach Dang, Ho Nghinh, Vo Nguyen Giap and Ho Xuan Huong are offered at tens or hundreds of billions of dong.

Hoang Lam, the owner of a hotel on Tran Bach Dang street, said accommodation service providers have been hit hard by Covid-19.

“We have been struggling to survive by cutting costs. However, as capital is getting exhausted, hotel owners have to liquidate assets to pay bank debts,” he said.

“Selling hotels is unavoidable as there is no source of revenue, and the operation cost is high,” he said.

Do Van Hien from Dana Hotel, a broker, said a lot of hotels in Da Nang have been put up for sale since the second Covid-19 outbreak.

“The hotels for sale are 2-4-star. The prices have fallen by 20 percent and buyers are mostly from northern provinces,” Hien said.

According to Hien, 3-star hotels are priced at VND20-100 billion, while 4-star hotels are at least VND280 billion. The value of hotels depends on the locations, area, quality, numbers of rooms and brands.

The transactions of 4-5-star hotels, which have strong brands, are confidential. Hotel owners only work with prestigious brokers, and buyers have to prove their financial capability.

Hien said no one wanted to sell hotels in 2016-2019 because they could make a high profit from the business. But since 2020, guests are coming in dribs and drabs, and operation costs and loan interest rates are high.

Cao Tri Dung, chair of the Da Nang Tourism Association, admitted that tourism services have become nearly frozen and many hotels have been put up on sale.

“The pandemic resurgence before Tet blocked sources of guests. Ninety percent of clients cancelled or postponed plans to come to Da Nang,” he said.

He said this is common in a market economy, and that it is time to restructure the accommodation segment.

According to Da Nang People’s Committee, the total number of guests staying at accommodation facilities in the city in January 2021 was 251,094, a 65.6 percent decrease compared with the same period last year.

Ho Giap

Hospitals have gained in recent years thanks to improved facilities and more strategic partnerships

Nipro Pharma Corporation – Japan’s biggest prescription drug contract manufacturer – has nearly completed procedures to increase investment capital by about $270 million to enlarge its facility at Saigon High-tech Park (SHTP) in Ho Chi Minh City so as to increase production volume.

“The procedure completion is expected in the next few weeks, thus increasing Nipro Pharma’s total investment there to $570 million,” a SHTP representative told VIR. “Nipro has performed well since it began investment in the park in 2016.”

Nipro Pharma is among the Japanese investors which have strong interest in Vietnam’s healthcare sector. Many more are expanding to and in Vietnam, according to the Japan External Trade Organization.

Together with Japan, South Korea and the EU also have more sights set on the lucrative local market.

Positive signals

The healthcare sector has welcomed new investment inflows in recent times, especially in 2020 when a number of new projects were announced despite pandemic restrictions. Late last year, a consortium led by Singaporean sovereign fund GIC acquired a minority stake in Vietnam-based private hospital operator Vinmec, part of Vingroup, for $203.1 million.

The year also witnessed VinaCapital using $26.7 million to acquire 30 per cent stake in Thu Cuc International General Hospital; and British Real Capital London’s launch of the $156 million Hong Anh Medical Campus project in Ho Chi Minh City.

In addition to foreign investment, new domestic private capital flows into the sector were also reported during the year. Last January the southern province of Tra Vinh licensed the high-tech pharma project from TV Pharma with initial investment of VND650 billion ($28.26 million). A few months later, the Van Phuc-Saigon Hospital and Hoan My General Hospital projects were also kicked off. Elsewhere, the Long An Obstetrics and Pediatrics Hospital, a public-private partnership (PPP) with Technical World Group being the investors, was put into operation.

The hospital segment is among the most attractive to international financiers and domestic ventures. Since 2015 when the government issued a policy on encouraging private investment in the health sector, over 200 private-run hospitals and more than 35,000 private-owned clinics were built nationwide.

Together with newly-built facilities, existing hospitals are advancing digitalisation projects to cash in on the unmet demands for high-quality services among Vietnamese who were spending an estimated $2 billion on overseas treatment every year before the pandemic.

In addition to infrastructure advances, the trend of focusing on social business programmes has been reinforced by recent moves among multinational corporations like Novartis, Roche, Sanofi, GSK, and AstraZeneca. The moves are in anticipation of a sharp rise in non-communicable diseases thanks to an ageing population.

For example, AstraZeneca Vietnam in collaboration with the Ministry of Health (MoH) and three specialised associations has launched a communications campaign to improve community awareness in asthma management.

Similarly, late last year the Vietnam Medical Association and Roche Vietnam signed a strategic partnership to implement a scheme on improving access to innovative therapies for high-risk breast cancer patients until 2025.

Also last year, GSK Pte., Ltd. in Vietnam signed an MoU with the MoH to fight against antimicrobial resistance in Vietnam, with the deal lasting until 2023.

Despite the growing interest, the quality of such initiatives has yet to satisfy the demand. According to the Vietnam 2035 Report by the World Bank and the Ministry of Planning and Investment, total spending on healthcare in the local market makes up about 5.8 per cent of the country’s GDP, among the highest rates in the region.

New motivations

Like other sectors in Vietnam, the healthcare sector faces a mismatch between the demand for investment and the fiscal space available to meet such demand. In 2016, it was estimated that the public healthcare network would need infrastructure investment of VND176 trillion ($8 billion) for the 2016–2020 period. Since 2010, the government has only allocated and met around two-thirds of capital demand for that period.

Therefore, the government sees private resources as critical to filling that gap, with government master plans for facility investment explicitly directing the MoH and hospitals to mobilise funding from the private sector.

Despite the sector’s importance, private investment in healthcare remains low due to shortcomings including a lack of a legal framework for PPP investment. However, the Law on Public-Private Partnership Investment, which took effect from January, will open the room for private investment in healthcare.

According to a VIR source, the government is gathering ideas from ministries and central agencies for the draft decree guiding the implementation of the law so that it is expected to be issued in the next few days, becoming the key piece of legislation governing PPP transactions in the country.

Under the law, health remains one of the priority sectors for PPP investment. Moreover, some legal concerns among investors are being solved. Specifically, Vietnam will, for the first time, apply revenue risk allocation for related initiatives.

Investors of such projects will be also ensured the right to access and use land and other public assets. Additionally, PPP businesses will enjoy incentives in tax, land use fee, land lease fee, and will be more in line with the prevailing rules on tax, land, and investment.

In addition to the Law on Public-Private Partnership Investment, the new Law on Investment and the new Law on Enterprises are expected to further facilitate capital flows into healthcare.

Moreover, it is projected that the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement will bring more investment opportunities to EU-based pharma businesses in Vietnam and stiffening market competition. The landmark agreement will open the Vietnamese market in fields that businesses have been seeking particular solutions to for years, such as intellectual property rights, direct pharmaceuticals imports, and tenders, among others.

A representative of the MoH said, “Vietnam’s health sector is working on a number of tasks to achieve its goals. The sector always encourages private investment to join.”

Barriers remain

According to the World Bank’s “PPP for Health in Vietnam – Issues and Options” publication, the application of such partnerships in the health sector is still limited despite several facilitators such as the promotion of private investment into healthcare activities, deepening of hospital autonomy, the expansion of universal health insurance coverage, and the development of healthcare credits.

Thus far, a long wish list of 63 projects remains in the health PPP project pipeline. This high number is indicative of ineffective PPP project screening criteria rather than high potential, and only a small percentage of these projects are expected to reach implementation.

Most health PPP projects are proposed and developed at the sub-national level, especially in Ho Chi Minh City, and focus on hospital infrastructure and services rather than on preventive and primary healthcare. They are oriented towards higher-income groups in urban areas rather than disadvantaged groups in rural areas. The proposed health PPP pipeline, therefore, raises serious questions about equity and efficiency in public sector health service delivery.

Furthermore, PPPs have not been embedded in health policies and related regulations, hampering the use of PPPs to expand infrastructure and improve services in the sector. Stakeholders have far greater motivation and incentives to engage in healthcare projects using the joint venture models that were made possible through private investment attraction policy rather than the more complicated and prolonged PPP route.

In the current context, the World Bank experts said that health PPP models and contracts should be adopted with caution. The “asset-heavy, service-light” PPP models, such as equipment and facility PPPs, seem to be the most feasible options. Meanwhile small-scale “asset-light, service-heavy” models such as specialised services and integrated PPPs at the primary healthcare level may be suitable for selected projects for which the private sector has a competitive advantage.

Vietnam, however, does not yet seem to be ready for a fully integrated hospital PPP model because of various barriers in the existing regulatory framework as well as the capacity mismatch between the public and private sectors.

Experts recommend that the MoH should develop a circular guiding the screening, preparation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of health PPP projects.

By Minh Nguyet

Thai Binh native Nguyen Thi Ut, 64, who has been selling the dish for 30 years, said different from other bun bung soup in the north with main ingredients such as doc mung (Indian taro), the dish in Thai Binh has hoa chuoi ( banana flowers ) that have made it beloved.

Bun bung hoa chuoi (rice vermicelli soup with pork ribs and banana flowers), a traditional dish that has been existed in Thai Binh Province for a hundred of years. — Photo zingnews.vn

Ut said the main ingredients of bun bung hoa chuoi include rice vermicelli, pig’s trotters, pig ribs or marrowbone, la lot (wild betel leaf), minced pork and banana flowers. The minced pork is soaked with fish sauce, onions and several spices before being wrapped in the la lot and boiled in the broth pot for a while then taken out to be eaten with the soup.

“To have a good broth pot, I have to simmer the pig’s ribs or its marrowbone for almost two hours while boiling the pig’s trotters for half an hour to ensure the meat is soft but still crispy,” said Ut.

Many people in and out of Thai Binh become addict of the bun bung hoa chuoi dish. — Photo zingnews.vn

The banana flowers should be cut into pieces and soaked in rice water for about 20 minutes to reduce the resin and tartness before being put in the broth pot to boil for 10 minutes, she said, adding that she has her own secrets to ensure the broth remains pure but still sweet and fragrant.

Ut said she often sells between 25-30kg of rice vermicelli a day.

Banana flowers are cut into pieces and soak in water for 20 minutes before cooking. — Photo giadinh.net.vn

Eater Ha Van Mung and his wife have been Ut’s regular customers for years. They said they are addicted to Ut’s bún bung hoa chuối as their breakfast.

“Every morning we often stand in a long queue to have our favourite food. We enjoy it so much,” said Mung.

Mung’s wife Bui Thi Loi said she likes a bowl of bun bung not only for its taste and delicious but also its colours, with the white bun, red tomato and chilli, green fresh herbs and betel leaf rolls, brown boiled pig’s trotters and banana flowers and the light yellow colour of the broth.

Asked why the broth has a yellow colour, Ut said she uses several pieces of turmeric and pounds it as bran then puts it in the broth.

“The yellow colour helps give the dish its special taste that attracts diners,” she said.

Nguyen Thi Huan from Quang Ninh Province said she was a big fan of Ut’s bun bung hoa chuoi.

“I often come to Ut’s shop to enjoy the dish when I have a business trip to Thai Binh. Although have asked Ut for a recipe to cook the dish at home its taste is not the same as Ut’s,” she said.

A tray of tasty bun bung hoa chuoi dish. — Photo giadinh.net.vn

“I will never forget the broth’s sweetness, the meaty and delicious taste of pig’s trotters and betel leaf rolls and particularly the light tartness and crispiness of banana flowers. Although the dish is simple its rich characteristics and aromatic flavour have made many people, particularly those who live far from their Thai Binh homeland, miss it so much,” said Huan.  VNS

One slide from Boeing’s 2020 Commercial Market Outlook (CMO) ranks Việt Nam in the top 5 countries which add the most airlines capacity between 2010-19.

HÀ NỘI — Southeast Asia will need 4,400 new airplanes valued at US$700 billion to support expanding demand for air travel over the next 20 years, said Darren Hulst, Boeing vice president of Commercial Marketing.

In an online conference yesterday, Hulst quoted Boeing’s 2020 Commercial Market Outlook (CMO), saying: “The intra-Southeast Asian market will become the fifth largest in the world by 2039, and the vast domestic and regional air-travel network across the region positions it well for a post-pandemic recovery.”

With low-cost carriers providing affordable service and added capacity, CMO estimated traffic growth in Southeast Asia to grow by 5.7 per cent annually in the next 20 years, making the region the second largest aviation market in the Asia-Pacific region after China.

Boeing, at the same time, projected the region’s commercial airplane fleet to grow 5.3 per cent annually during the period while the demand for aftermarket commercial services could reach US$790 billion.

Hulst said: “Southeast Asia’s fundamental growth drivers remain robust. With an expanding middle-class and growth in private consumption, the region’s economy has grown by nearly 70 per cent over the last decade, which increases propensity to travel,” adding: “Governments in the region continue to recognise the travel and tourism sectors as important drivers of economic growth.”

Boeing’s vice president said: “Indonesia, Thailand, Việt Nam, Malaysia and the Philippines are the markets that most contribute to the growth in the global aviation market. They are also places with more room for expansion because of the emerging middle class, which could be 60 million new passengers in the next 15 years.”

Hulst also considered Việt Nam as the fastest growing market in terms of growth of air travel in the region with the advantage of a strong domestic market and the recent control of the pandemic.

Mentioning the demand for airplanes in the region, he said though the near-term airplane deliveries were impacted as a result of the pandemic, Boeing estimated operators would need more than 3,500 new single-aisle airplanes in the region by 2039 as the low-cost-carriers have the highest market penetration globally.

The airplane maker said twin-aisle airplanes such as the 777X and 787 Dreamliner still remain foundational to Southeast Asia’s air travel industry, adding one in four twin-aisle airplanes delivered to the broader Asia-Pacific region would go to a carrier operating in Southeast Asia. It forecast the region would need 760 new widebodies by 2039.

As the region’s commercial aviation services growth remained promising in the long term, said the CMO, Southeast Asia commercial services were valued at $790 billion over the next 20 years, a slight increase from last year’s projection, driven largely by growth in freighter conversions and digital solutions and analytics. With such estimation, Southeast Asia expected to require 183,000 more commercial pilots, cabin crew members and aviation technicians.

Globally, Boeing forecast the demand for 43,110 new commercial airplanes and the demand for aftermarket services to be equivalent to US$9 trillion over the next two decades when world air cargo traffic was projected to grow 4 per cent annually due to solid industrial production and world trade. The CMO said freighters would remain the backbone of the cargo industry with the need for 930 new and 1,500 converted freighters during the same span. — VNS

The majority of Vietnamese-owned upscale hotels are managed by the international chains who offer them great marketing potential and operational solutions. So how does this unique luxury boutique hotel on Phu Quoc Island run by a Vietnamese family manage to raise the bar of hospitality not only on a national level, but also on a global scale?

‘Designed by us, Vietnamese’

From the very inception, Salinda Resort was conceptualized to showcase the power of Vietnamese potential that is often overlooked by the attractiveness of foreign expertise in hotel management.

To make a solid foundation for this cause, the owners selected both the architecture and interior design teams from Vietnam who were able to create a resort that combines contemporary comforts with local touches yet respects the natural surroundings of Phu Quoc.

Le Thanh Hai from HAIA Architects & Associates was fascinated with the combination of Scandinavian functionality and Japanese rustic minimalism, also referred to as ‘Japandi’ design.

This fusion creates the perfect blend of function and form, focusing on clean lines and light colors to create a feeling of art and simplicity.

As the design philosophy focuses on the importance of nature, the architect incorporated natural materials throughout the resort, such as the most sustainable wood in the world – Accoya; tropical landscapes covering over 75 percent of the land; and thermoregulating stone walls covered with ivies that ‘cool down’ the air.

Yet to give a homey feeling to this serene concept, Aline Ho from Asiatique Design added a local touch to the interior design honoring Phu Quoc landscapes and culture with carefully chosen ceramic ornaments, local fisherman crafts, shell textures, and exotic patterns.

But one of the most outstanding design features of the resort is the elaborate decorative murals offering a space of narrative to the viewer.

From Vertical Zen Garden stretching through three stories to tropical broken ceramic wall art in Premium Deluxe Rooms to sterling-silver wallpapers by de Gournay in Pakka Indian Restaurant, one can truly listen to all the Stories on the Walls at Salinda Resort.

Building the culture

A successful hotel is always born from the culture of its top management, and the culture of top management is always born from the owner. Salinda Resort is no exception.

Dedicated to the names of two sisters ‘Sandra & Linda,’ Salinda Resort embraced the sentiments of the sisterhood – trust, encouragement, and kindness to each other.

“And not just the kindness that is generous in material items, but a heart that wants to give the best and be the best in character for every relationship,” shares Sandra Nguyen Si, the eldest daughter and the CEO of the company.

While the owners may not directly interact with their guests, their attitude filters down through their executive management, right to their line staff.

So, when it came to building the greatest team, Salinda was looking for managers with character, not just a set of skills; role models who would take care of their employees on a deeper level; and leaders who truly loved to create soulful experiences for their guests.

What is also quite noticeable is the diversity of the team with people coming from all over the country and also from India, Thailand, the Philippines, and Italy, who worked in leading hotel brands like Six Senses, Raffles, and Como. This diverse trait stimulates tolerance, experience exchange, and even healthy competitiveness among Salinda Family members – people who are united in the passion of bringing happiness to others.

After years of working and living abroad, Nguyen Dang Thanh, Director of Rooms, shares, “I decided to settle on this peaceful island at a place where I can touch people’s hearts. Salinda has become my family where every day I can transfer my love of hospitality to my team and share my international experience. This is the place where smiles are the main currency which the solidarity, harmony, and empathy of our team are based on.”

With these core values in mind, the team brought Salinda to the top and won both guest reviews and industry awards such as Haute Grandeur for Asia’s Best Boutique Honeymoon Hotel, Condé Nast Traveler Asia’s Top 30 Resorts, TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice Vietnam’s #2 Luxury Hotels, and many more.

Connecting with guests emotionally

“It goes without saying that someone who wants to be a hotel owner has to have the mindset of a business person, but to be a successful one requires something extra: a desire to be of service. And this trait defined the environment in which everyone at Salinda Resort works,” says Madame Huyen, co-founder of Salinda Resort.

The emotional connection – and creating that ‘home-from-home’ feeling – is linked to the product, the service, and the people.

When done right, when genuine, authentic, and meaningful – however big or small that emotional connection might be – this is what luxury hospitality is today.

What sets a great luxury hotel apart from a standard five-star one is the attention to detail from the first moment of guest interaction until the very last one.

And being boutique allows Salinda to be extremely flexible and creative with how the hotel reinvents the wheel of hospitality: from handwritten welcome letters from the management with sweet treats prepared by three specialty chefs down to the activity team personally laying towels for each guest in sun lounges with special flags they can put up, so the pool bar team can provide dining service yet still give the guest privacy to enjoy the beach.

Being visible throughout guests’ stay allows Salinda not only to control every rendezvous to ensure it lives up to its promise, but also to build an incredibly trustworthy relationship with its guests. For Salinda, it doesn’t even stop when its guests have already boarded the plane – its resort manager Jeevan Thomas sends them a personal email to ensure they are back home safely.

“Because the last thing we see or hear when we depart from a place tends to be the most powerful memories that come back to us when we think about it again. And that may be one of the determining factors (if not the major one) whether our guests will want to pay Phu Quoc a second visit in the future,” concludes Sandra.

The first impression always counts, but the emotional aftertaste is forever.