HCMC – InterContinental Asiana Saigon in downtown HCMC has recruited 452 staff out of the 550 needed for the inauguration scheduled for early September.

Around 430 of the employees are Vietnamese, InterContinental Asiana Saigon said in a statement issued on Monday.

“We are well advanced in our recruitment process of our Vietnamese team that will be trained to serve our guests from our first opening day,” said Philip Riley, InterContinental Hotels Group’s regional general manager for Vietnam.

“We are still expanding our team so more Vietnamese people will have the opportunity to join InterContinental Asiana Saigon,” Riley said in the statement.

An intensive training program on customer care, IHG leadership competencies, managing performance and development is being conducted for the employees this month and next as part of a strategy to support them to develop their career at the group.

Riley noted by building up a high quality team, InterContinental Asiana Saigon had contributed to boosting the current Vietnamese tourism labor market.

Tourism is a US$4.5-billion industry in Vietnam and accounts for 11% of the country’s total employment, according to Tourism Working Group under the Vietnam Business Forum.

Figures of the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs show Vietnam has a current workforce of around 45 million people and more than one million people join the market every year.

Riley told the Daily earlier this year InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) was expected to open the second luxury 305-room hotel in Vietnam in early September, or less than two years after the first hotel was inaugurated in Hanoi.

The new InterContinental hotel on the corner of Le Duan and Hai Ba Trung streets in District 1 has a 600-seat ballroom, meeting rooms, restaurants, spa and other facilities.

Riley said IHG would manage some 10 properties in Vietnam in the next five years, and would introduce more brands including business-focus Crowne Plaza, the world-famous Holiday Inn in addition to InterContinental. (Saigon times)

Hanoi last week decided to go ahead with a $7 billion mega project to build a new city along the banks of the Red River.

The project was initiated before the capital’s expansion, so it included 40 kilometres of the Red River belonging to the old city. Now, the expanded city encompasses 180km of the river, which would overwhelm developers, so they will stick to the original plan.

Pham Quang Nghi, secretary of the Hanoi Communist Party Committee, said the project’s main goals were to secure the city against floods and develop the Red River banks into a modern urban zone that would contribute to the city’s socio-economic and environmental targets.

Land clearance and resettlements would be the biggest challenges for the project and Nghi asked relevant agencies to actively implement solutions to address these challenges. “Research needs to be conducted on existing areas so that renovation can be implemented, along with reconstruction, and so that relevant sites can be kept intact and the number of households needing to be moved can be reduced,” he said.

According to the latest estimation, 39,100 households will need to be removed from the zone. The project plans to provide 97,000 new accommodations by the time it is completed in 2020, with 70 per cent for sale. Some 29,000 of the removed households may eventually be resettled within the area.

To Anh Tuan, director of Hanoi’s Department of Zoning and Architecture, said that the city would sign an agreement with South Korea’s Seoul City to obtain help in devising a detailed project plan. The plan would be submitted to the National Appraisal Council and await approval by the prime minister and the National Assembly.
The total area for the project is about 4,200 hectares, with 80 per cent for restoring and maintaining the river’s environment. The rest will be used for office buildings, houses, apartments and other public constructions. Environmental components of the project will include parks, green areas, natural reserves and ecological tourism areas. (MONRE)

In order to sell land and houses, speculators have created a lot of ‘artificial price fevers’ to urge people to rush to buy real estate for fear that the prices would increase further.

Real estate prices pushed up in accordance with ‘virtual demand’

Real estate prices in Hanoi have been staying firm, which has led to decreases in successful transactions on real estate trading floors.

Meanwhile, according to Pham Trung Ha, Director of Hoa Phat Real Estate Company, land and apartment prices at many projects in urban areas were increasing sharply.

Prices increased by 20-30 percent in just a few months, or even by 60 percent, because investors ‘surfed’ on their investments. After prices at projects reached overly high levels, and could not be pushed up further, investors ‘jumped’ to other projects.

Ha said that these ‘surfing investments’ has led to the fact that more and more ‘hot places’, where prices escalate rapidly, have appeared in Hanoi’s market. However, the areas cool down when prices reach high levels.

In Duong Noi and Van Khe urban areas, the real estate price was just 20 million dong per square metre after Tet, but has risen to 28-30 million dong per square metre now.

At Van Phu urban area, the land price has surged to 20-22 million dong per square metre.

After the land prices reach high levels in some areas, the price increases will stop and transactions will become fewer. After that, the ‘land price fever’ will be transferred to other areas.

For example, after the price fevers in Van Khe, Van Phu and Duong Noi areas finished,  fevers were seen with Vuon Cam or Geleximco projects. The land prices at the projects increased by 20-40 percent in just a short period. Currently, the land price at the projects is hovering around 20-22 million dong per square metre.

However, the fevers at Vuon Cam and Geleximco projects have also finished because they are now attacking more distant areas: the Van Canh new urban area, Tan Tay Do and the northern area of Highway No 32.

The land at Van Canh and Tan Tay Do urban areas is now going for 16-17 million dong per square metre. At the northern area of Highway 32, the price has been pushed up to 20 million dong per square metre.

However, as ‘hot places’ like Van Canh and Tan Tay Do have seen prices reach overly high levels, investors have lost interest.

The apartments at 34T buldings, or 24T1 or 24T2 in Trung Hoa Nhan Chinh areas now also have high price levels from 29 to 35 million dong per square metre.

Therefore, the prices of the buildings invested in by Vinaconex in Trung Hoa Nhan Chinh area are not likely to increase further. That explains why the buildings are still on offer on trading floors, but buyers are hesitant to buy them.

There will be many ‘artificial waves’

The information that Hanoi authorities have asked the Prime Minister to allow the resumption of 240 real estate projects in the former Ha Tay province has been applauded by real estate investors in Hanoi. If the 240 projects get the go-ahead from the Prime Minister, Hanoi’s real estate market will see new ‘fever places’.

However, analysts say that investors will have to wait six months more to see new products launched onto the market. Therefore, Hanoi’s market will have to operate now with the available products.

The analysts say that as the prices in the areas are high already, in order to successfully sell products, speculators will have to use tricks to create new virtual fevers to make people worry about new price increases. (vietnamnet)

Trung Thuy Group Joint Stock Co, the main investor of Lancaster Building in HCM City has announced that the company would officially start its three projects in Dong Nai, Da Nang and Hanoi with total investment capital of 1.17 trillion dong.

Duong Thanh Thuy, Chairwoman of the company’s management board revealed that the company would hold groundbreaking ceremony for a tourism transit in Da Nang city on July 15. This project is estimated to cost around 120 billion dong.

On July 20, Trung Thuy Group will officially start construction project of Lancaster Hanoi building with total investment value of 900 billion dong. The third project would be a tourism transit in Dong Nai Province, worth 150 billion dong, which is expected to be started at the end of this July.

Those are three among four key projects that the company plans to focus on carrying out in 2009. The two tourism transits would help attract domestic travellers and the project in Hanoi would become the destination for foreign tourists and experts, Thuy said

The Hanoi Lancaster including trade centre and apartments will be located on Nui Truc St, Ba Dinh Dist, Hanoi. Trung Thuy Group cooperated with the Leather Research Institute in Hanoi to invest in this project. It’s expected that 29-storey Hanoi Lancaster Building project will be finished in 2012 with the total construction area of 57,000 square metres. Apart from the area for trading and service centre, there will be about 300 apartments to be built there.

The high-class apartments in Lancaster Hanoi will be built to meet the accommodation demands from the foreign experts working in Hanoi and in industrial zones nearby Hanoi.

In addition to these projects of office buildings, apartments and tourism transits, Trung Thuy Group JSC is the trademark owner of Miss Aodai, specialising in trading handmade and fine-art products and other tourism services in Hanoi and HCM City. The company also plans to build a four-star resort in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province.

HCMC – The average office rent in HCMC, especially at prime locations, is still higher than the reasonable level even though it has fallen sharply in the year to date, according to the general manager of the real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield (Vietnam) Ltd.

The office rent is expensive in certain areas in the city, Toby Dodd told a real estate business luncheon organized by the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (EuroCham) in HCMC on Wednesday.

Dodd gave the comment when showing a slide of his presentation that unveils the office rent in HCMC in the first half of the year was still much higher than in regional cities like Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Manila.
“HCMC is expensive as the rent of space at dominant buildings is still too high,” Dodd told the Daily after the luncheon on the topic of “Survival of the Quickest – Living in a Tenants World.”

Many buildings in this city offer much higher monthly rents than the “fair reasonable rent” of US$30 per square meter, Dodd furthered. “I think half of the market has reached this level now but half the market is still too high.”

Last month, the real estate services firm CB Richard Ellis Vietnam (CBRE) released its updates that the monthly rent of offices in HCMC had tumbled by 30-50% in the first half of the year but stood at US$60 per square meter, or US$10 lower than the highest level recorded in the first quarter and over US$25 lower than 12 months ago.

Dodd of Cushman & Wakefield said the coming months would decide whether the average rent of offices for lease in HCMC would reach the reasonable rate as the buildings under construction would be completed.

Dodd forecast that the average monthly rent for Grade B offices in HCMC would fall to US$20-25 per square meter.

According to CBRE, HCMC has 1,024,000 square meters of office space as of June as against 910,000 square meters last year. The company put the vacancy rate in central business districts at 15% and would double when more projects go online later this year.

Dodd said with US$30 per square meter for the Grade A office space, landlords would still have profit. “From the landlords I have spoken to that is the level they are still profitable.” However, Dodd said he did not want to see the rent of Grade A office space to go down lower than the reasonable rate because it would be a bad thing for the market.

Dodd noted the reasonable rent for Grade A offices were based on the ability of tenants to pay, comparison with regional markets, and the supply and demand in HCMC in the current situation. He said supply had outstripped demand in this market.

Both landlords and tenants should look for win-win solutions and long-term relationships for their mutual benefits in the current time, Dodd said in response to the Daily question whether now was the time for tenants to have a high voice about the deal.

Dodd said the office rent growing too high like previously was not the right definition for a growing office market, especially when companies are trying to cut costs. “A growing market means more buildings and more tenants.”

At the luncheon, OUT-2 International Design Consultancy Co. managing director Andrew Currie also suggested ways for companies to maximize business efficiency and effectiveness in tough times. (Saigon Times)