Promises of high returns and increasing competition are prompting developers to spend enormously on luxury resort projects.

Due to a high level of competition, luxury resort developers are wooing buyers with extravagant promotions

Hong Hac Dai Lai JSC – the developer of the Flamingo Dai Lai resort project, a luxury residential retreat located in the northern province of Vinh Phuc, about 40 kilometres northwest of Hanoi – has recently rolled out a promotion offering 100 Mercedes cars to customers that buy one of its Luxury Gold Villas before May 15, 2016.

This is the largest promotion at this resort to date, and one which has surprised many industry experts, as the resort has reported good occupancy rate since opening in 2011.

However, with heated competition from newcomers, resort operators are forced to lure buyers with increasingly expensive promotions.

Adjacent to the Flamingo Dai Lai resort is a pipeline of new projects on a similar scale, such as the Paradise Dai Lai resort or Tam Dao golf course villas from developer Nhat Hang Investment JSC.

The developer is offering Ngoc Trai (Pearl) and Sapphire villas, from 170 to 240 square metres, at attractive price-tags from VND3 billion ($137,600) to VND3.7 billion ($170,000), plus a car and other membership promotions.

Also in Vinh Phuc, FLC Group recently launched the first phase of the FLC Vinh Thinh resort, consisting of 100 rooms, a helipad, a golf course, and swimming pools.

FLC recently announced the implementation of the project’s second phase with the total investment capital of nearly VND5 trillion ($230 million) to be spent over an area of 250 hectares with a string of resort-style villas scheduled to be ready in 2017.

The northern resort market has seen robust growth since mid 2015 with a series of new medium- and large-scale projects.

Quang Ninh and Haiphong have emerged as the two most vibrant locations with a raft of mammoth projects in the works.

In 2015, Vietnam’s largest property developer Vingroup started work on its 895 million, 870-ha entertainment, housing, and eco-park project on the northern port city of Haiphong’s Vu Yen island, as well as the six-star Dao Reu resort project, which has an investment capital of VND1 trillion ($46 million).

In addition to Vingroup, several dozen tourism and resort projects from other major developers such as Sun Group, FLC, and BIM Group were also registered in these two locations with capital investment reaching into the hundreds of millions of US dollars.

According to head of Research and Consulting at property consultant CBRE Vietnam Duong Thuy Dung, 2016 is likely to be a good year for resort properties.

“The resort property market normally follows behind the conventional real estate market by about six months to one year.

The property market began to rebound in 2014 and gathered sharp growth in 2015.

Fair figures were recently recorded in the growth of visitor arrivals at resort locations.

This could pave the way for phenomenal growth in the resort property segment this year,” Dung commented.