Statistics show that the number of tourists coming to Quang Nam is showing signs of improvement. In the 3 days from December 30, 2023 to January 1, 2024 alone, the locality welcomed about 103,000 visitors, an increase of 130% over the same period last year. Tourist accommodation is estimated at 20,200, an increase of 37% over the same period in 2023.

However, the above figures are still "insignificant" to the tourism and hotel business activities in the area. Therefore, at the end of 2023, many investors had to sell off hotels to have cash flow to pay off debts.

A tycoon of a famous hotel chain in Hoi An shared that the business has 7 hotels with nearly 2,000 rooms. After nearly 2 years of bad business due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of visitors has decreased dramatically. Along with the global economic recession, tourists have not fully recovered, he decided to sell 4 hotels at a loss to have cash flow to pay off bank loans.

“The money earned from selling the hotel is about 30-40% less than the initial investment. The main reason is that land prices have dropped, many people are no longer interested in hotels,” he said.

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Many hotels in Hoi An City have to be sold off.

Currently, his company has 3 smaller hotels, with about 200 rooms. This tycoon is still selling 2 more hotels to have money to rotate capital.

The above business owner commented that, up to now, most of the tourism and travel businesses in Hoi An have been devastated, losing all their “resistance” after a long period of sparse visitors. Not to mention, prices are more expensive than before, the high price of airfare makes tourists hesitant to travel.

“For example, take the cheapest airfare, which used to be only 800,000 VND/trip, now the price for the same flight has increased to 2 million VND. Of course, tourists will look at their budget, temporarily put travel aside, and wait for the right time, when prices are stable. From then on, the number of passengers is high but only on holidays, while on weekdays it is still sparse,” he said.

Recently, many banks have also rushed to sell hotels to recover debts.

In mid-November 2023, VietinBank Hoi An announced the auction of a series of assets including hotels and resort villas in Hoi An City, with starting prices ranging from tens to hundreds of billions of VND.

Previously, at the end of October 2023, the Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development also put up for sale 11 ancient houses in Hoi An. Many properties have an area of ​​up to 340m2. The starting price of these properties is the lowest at 8.5 billion VND and the highest at 71.179 billion VND. The total value of the 11 collateral properties mentioned above (calculated according to the starting price) is up to more than 252 billion VND.

These are all collateral for loans at Agribank North Ho Chi Minh City branch for a period of 3 years from 2016-2018.

Deputy Director of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Quang Nam, Mr. Van Ba ​​Son, acknowledged that recently, many businesses in the area had to sell off hotels due to the impact of the global economic recession.

“There are many reasons for this situation, such as the prolonged impact of the pandemic, economic recession, and high travel costs, causing a sharp decline in the number of tourists to the province. When building hotels, these units had to borrow from banks, and the lack of cash flow forced them to sell at a loss,” said Mr. Son.

According to Mr. Son, in the coming time, Quang Nam will build a mechanism to support MICE tourism (tourism combined with organizing seminars and conferences). The province will strengthen and support prices, promote, attract destinations, and train human resources. This will help restart and attract more tourists to Quang Nam.