Saigontourist moves on with overseas hotel acquisition plan

Saigontourist Holding Company said on Tuesday it was still pressing on with a plan to buy overseas hotels, targeting those in the U.S. and Japan first as highly potential markets for the country’s leading hospitality company.
Nguyen Huu Tho, general director of the company, told the Daily that his staff had just made survey trips to the U.S. and Japan to look for the best buys.
Tho had announced a plan in the middle of last year to acquire a hotel in San Francisco in the U.S., and asserted on Tuesday the plan stayed unchanged. However, the company is in talks with other hotels in the U.S. city to find a good hotel with the best price.
“The lingering global financial crisis still impacts on property prices, so we are looking for the best time to buy a hotel with a good price,” he told the Daily on Tuesday on the sidelines of a meeting to promote events of the Tet 2010 festival in HCMC. The meeting was held in the Continental Hotel by Saigontourist as the organizer of the festival.
Saigontourist last year disclosed a plan to buy hotels in some foreign countries including the U.S., Japan, Germany and Russia, and expected then to complete the deal in the U.S. in late 2009.
“We have plans to buy hotels in some foreign countries but we are giving priority to the U.S. and Japan because of the big potentials in these markets. In the short term, the main aim of Saigontourist is the U.S. so we will buy a hotel in this market first,” Tho said.
He said the company is also discussing with four hotels in Japan to find the best.
Saigontourist reported to have welcomed more than 2.03 million local and foreign guests in 2009, up around 350,000 compared to 2008.
The number of guests catered to by Saigontourist strongly increased in the global downturn thanks to the contribution of the newly-opened Saigon Exhibition & Convention Center in HCMC’s District 7, Tho explained. The center has attracted nearly 650,000 guests last year, with around 30% being foreigners.
“We recorded great business results from the center and that’s why we’ve decided to speed up the process to work on the second phase of the center late of this year,” Tho said.
Saigontourist reported 2009 revenue of over VND8.2 trillion, up 6.9% year-on-year, with the gross profit of over VND2.6 trillion, up 4.1% compared to 2008.
The company expects the number of guests and revenue this year to increase by some 10%.
“It means that we will have VND9 trillion (US$500 million) in revenue this year, which will be a good landmark for the bigger target of US$1 billion in revenue in 2015,” Tho said.