Five-star hotels prepare for Lunar New Year

A number of five-star hotels in town have prepared some fabulous programs to serve guests during Lunar New Year. Here are some of the top picks.

*Hotel Equatorial HCMC

The hotel offers Tet Hamper and gastronomy programs at Orientica, Chit Chat and The Poolside.

There are six choices of Tet hampers coming in beautiful shapes for guests to choose from. Furthermore, there is a takeaway menu packed with Tet goodies. Both Tet hampers and the takeaway menu are available from now until February 5.

Orientica Seafood Restaurant & Bar runs a brand new menu of 30 dim-sum dishes from Monday to Friday and the ‘All you can eat Dim Sum’ food fest every Saturday and Sunday lunch time. Chit Chat and Orientica Restaurant offer festive specials until February 5.  Diners can choose to eat BBQ every Saturday and Sunday at The Poolside featuring delicious grilled meats and fresh seafood on the à-la-carte menu.

*Hotel Nikko Saigon

Ming Court at Hotel Nikko Saigon, welcomes the Year of the Horse with three set dinner menus. Delicacies include Yee Sang, shark’s fin soup, lobster, scallop, beef, abalone and king prawn are used to make specialties named Khai Truong Hong Phat and Khai Hoa Phu Quy designed to wish everyone a very happy and prosperous Lunar New Year filled with good health and great success.

In the first few days of the Lunar New Year, the Ming Court team will introduce another set dinner menu especially for vegetarians.

*InterContinental Asiana Saigon

Yee-Sang Salad, or Prosperity Toss, is a popular dish believed to bring luck and prosperity to everyone and is available during Tet at Yu Chu. This shared raw fish salad is colorful and the act of tossing the salad together symbolises ushering in prosperity and abundance for the coming New Year. The restaurant also prepares special Tet set menus that include a variety of lucky and happy dishes from January 29 to February 2.

Market 39 on the hotel’s ground floor offers both traditional Tet dishes as well as other international cuisine, including barbecued pork, seafood, sticky rice cakes and many more.

*Lotte Legend Hotel Saigon

At Tet, the hotel is decorated with apricot and peach blossom flowers. On January 31, the first day of the New Lunar Year, from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., there will be a grand lion dance at the lobby, followed by a ceremony to present offerings to express appreciation to heaven, earth, deities and ancestors. Atrium Café will feature a spectacular Tet buffet. Local chefs add to the restaurant’s international buffet spread traditional Tet specialties and authentic Vietnamese delicacies.

*New World Saigon Hotel

From January 31 to February 14, gather your family and friends for a Tet lunch or dinner at Parkview that features a selection of traditional Vietnamese and Chinese dishes, local and imported specialty seafood delights, homemade Yee Sang and much more. On January 31, Dynasty serves an elegant Tet lunch featuring a sumptuous array of dim sum and Chinese delicacies. Until February 14 you can celebrate with a healthy meal in the comfort of your home by choosing many delicious dishes.

*Movenpick Hotel Saigon

To celebrate the Lunar New Year, Café Saigon Restaurant will introduce a Vietnamese street food bazaar to diners. The trendy Japanese restaurant Iki has a “Fish Your Way” program that guests can customize their favorite ways of cooking for a whole fish order.

Chef Simon at Lotus Court will prepare Peking Duck and All You Can Eat Dim Sum Brunch to diners. Cay Da Café offers a collection of Lucky Cakes created by the hotel’s pastry team in many sizes and various flavors such as red velvet, passion fruit, tiramisu, lychee and green tea.

*Renaissance Riverside Hotel

The hotel will run some special programs on January 30. Guests to the Riverside Café and Kabin Chinese Restaurant can join in dinner buffets and countdown events.

At the Poolside, a BBQ dinner with food and Countdown party will be ready to serve diners. Guests can enjoy magnificent fireworks displays and spectacular river views.

*Sheraton Saigon Hotel & Towers

To celebrate Tet holiday, Saigon Café will be offering a special Vietnamese cuisine during Vietnamese week, from February 1 to February 7. Guests will savor a traditional selection of Vietnamese food including banh chung (glutinous sticky rice cake) and Vietnamese vegetable roots pickle, bitter melon filled with minced pork soup, braised pork with eggs in fresh coconut, chicken curry with sweet potato, and caramelized prawn with coconut. There is also a sweet corner with mouthwatering desserts and Vietnamese sweet soups. Dinner includes free flowing house wine, tea and Vietnamese coffee (black coffee or milk coffee).

*Windsor Plaza Hotel Saigon

Until January 26, a feast featuring nine authentic Chinese dishes in a unique set menu is available at Ngan Dinh Restaurant of Windsor Plaza Hotel. From now until the end of February you can celebrate the Lunar New Year with specialty Chinese puddings. Traditional delights are ready until January 30. Enjoy a pair of auspicious set menus with family, friends and business partners featuring traditional Lunar New Year dishes. These two unique feasts are served from January 27 to February 14.

Rooms at coastal hotels, resorts hard to find

The occupancy rate at many hotels and resorts in coastal tourist destinations is normally high during the Lunar New Year holiday, or Tet, so it is very difficult to secure rooms during such days.

Rooms are more expensive, but big groups of tourists numbering ten or more still cannot find rooms on Phu Quoc Island in the holiday.

Hotels and resorts on the island have almost been fully booked. The rate of a four-star room in Phu Quoc is around VND3.5 million a day, quite high compared to that in the mainland.

Similarly, according to representatives of many resorts in Phan Thiet City, tourists have booked almost all rooms on the first days of the Lunar New Year. It is now the peak time for international tourists, especially Russians, and thus a large number of rooms are set aside for them.

Besides, rooms are saved for travel firms and then for regular customers. As a result, it is not easy for individual customers to book rooms at good resorts in Ham Tien and Mui Ne in Phan Thiet.

According to Nguyen Van Khoa, general director of Mui Ne Bay Resort, the resort’s occupancy rate reaches 80% this month. However, two days before and three days after Tet, rooms are fully booked.

“The room rate does not rise as the resort signed contracts long ago… The number of tourists is high this year and other hotels in the city also report high bookings,” Khoa said.

In Danang City, rooms of four- to five-star coastal resorts and three-star hotels for stays on the first few days after Tet have all been sold. Some big resorts like Crowne Plaza with around 500 rooms will be full during the holiday.

The average occupancy rate of four- and five-star hotels are 65% in the holiday. If wanting to book rooms during the period, tourists should choose one- or two-star hotels whose current occupancy rate is still low, at around 30%.

According to Tran Chi Cuong, deputy director of Danang City’s Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the number of tourists traveling by air and sea increases strongly, with up to 74 flights taking international tourists to Danang (up 62.5%) and ten international cruise ships with 13,000 tourists on boards, doubling that of last year. Overall, there will be around 53,500 tourists visiting the city in the holiday, up 25% compared to the previous holiday.

Khanh Hoa Province’s Nha Trang City will also welcome a large number of tourists, especially Russian and Chinese tourists, this holiday. The occupancy rate is around 70% on the eve and Tet but rises up to 85-95% on the following days.

Nguyen Van Thanh, director of the Khanh Hoa Tourism Promotion Center, said that with Russian tourists alone, travel firms have booked up to 70% of some 10,000 rooms meeting two- to five-star standards. The province currently has a total of some 15,000 hotel rooms.

Champa music a special tourism product in central city

Champa music has affirmed its remarkable position in the central city of Da Nang’s tourism sector thanks to the city’s unique cultural identities, according to the online Danang Today.

Like Ninh Thuan and Quang Nam provinces, Da Nang has preserved many impressive Champa cultural vestiges, including music and architectural and archaeological works.

Director of the Da Nang Museum of Cham Sculpture Vo Van Thang said that a book entitled “Champa Music - the Interconnection between Champa and Vietnamese”, which was written by musician Tran Hong after many years of research into the Champa culture, was published in late 2013. This is the largest ever research work on Champa music.

Like the ethnic minority people in the Central Highlands, the Champa people regard music as an art form of the Gods and a means of communication between deities and human beings.

Music is always performed in many ceremonies for the Gods. Champa music shares similarities in the use of musical instruments with that of the ethnic minorities in the Central Highlands. Many Vietnamese-Champa folk songs feature surprisingly similar rhythms, musical scales and melodies.

According to Hong, a wide variety of musical instruments, folk songs and flash mob performances play a vital role in diversifying Da Nang’s musical treasures and those of Vietnam as a whole.

In 2013, the Da Nang tourism sector maintained stable growth, welcoming over 743,000 foreign tourists. The number of domestic holidaymakers exceeded 2.3 million, up 17 percent.

The city in 2014 will continue to build new tourist products as one of its measures to develop its smokeless industry in the context that the economy is forecast to recover in 2014 with the improvement of local businesses.-

Thua Thien-Hue focuses on job training for tourism

The central province of Thua Thien Hue plans to almost double the number of trained workers employed in the tourism sector to 22,000 by 2020, meeting demand created by its economic trends.

The province now has more than 10,000 people working for the sector, Ngo Hoa, Deputy Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee, said at a workshop on tourism development and job generation for rural young people in Hue on January 21.

The workshop, part of a cooperation programme between the province and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), was to gather consultation from relevant agencies on ambitious plans to embrace tourism development by offering training and job advice to rural young people.

At the event, participants discussed training priorities and considered suitable work placements for rural youngsters. These efforts are expected to improve service quality and diversify tourism products on offer in Thua Thien-Hue.

ILO representatives advised on relevant occupational skills and job programmes for young people in rural areas while discussing how they can access projects carried out in the province.

Foreign tourists to HCM City up 12 pct in first month

Ho Chi Minh City welcomed about 382,000 foreign visitors in January, up 12 percent over the same period last year, according to the municipal Culture, Sport and Tourism Department.

During the first month of the year, the city’s tourism sector earned 7.9 trillion VND (376.2 million USD), a rise of 17 percent against last January.

This year, the sector targets 4.4 million foreign visitors, a year-on-year increase of 7 percent and equivalent to 55 percent of the country’s total.

It will focus on developing waterway tourism and introducing this product at big events both at home and abroad.

In 2013, foreign arrivals to HCM City is estimated at 4.1 million, increasing 8.1 percent over 2012 and reaching 100.2 percent of the set target.

Total tourism turnover valued at almost 82 trillion VND (3.8 billion USD), accounting for 43 percent of the country’s figure.-

Tourism sector set to boost promotions overseas

The tourism industry will this year actively attend fairs and promotion programs overseas as well as organize trips to Vietnam for international reporters to introduce tourism and create business ties between local and foreign companies.

According to the plan of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), the authority and local enterprises will take part in plenty of tourism fairs in Japan, South Korea, China, Russia, Europe and Southeast Asia.

Especially, VNAT will focus on popular tourism exhibitions and fairs attracting numerous participants such as the international tourism expo in Russia’s Moscow, the ITB Berlin fair in Germany, the Top Resa fair in France and the CITM fair in China. The first activities will be carried out by VNAT and its members within this month.

Along with the aforesaid traditional markets, VNAT will this year also launch several activities to tap new markets including the Middle East and India. For the Middle East, the authority will attend the Arabian Travel Mart in Dubai while it plans to welcome journalists from India to introduce tourism and images of the country.

This year is also the first that the local tourism industry will promote golf tourism targeting the South Korean market. Despite the fact that this kind of tourism activity has yet to develop strongly, a number of tourism firms reported an increase in South Korean golfers to HCMC and other neighboring venues at weekends.

This year’s overseas tourism promotion plan of VNAT also includes culinary festivals.

Vietnam welcomed over 7.57 million international visitors in 2013, growing 10.6% year-on-year, with around VND20 billion spent on promotions. The tourism industry this year is looking to lure about eight million international visitors but the necessary expenses for tourism promotions are not yet revealed.

Source: SGT/SGGP/VNA/VNS