Nguyen Huu Tho, general director of Saigontourist, said at a year-end meeting with reporters last night in Van Thanh Tourist Park that the company would build high-class hotels in the complex to meet increasing demands.

"HCMC will see a shortfall of around 20,000 hotel rooms in 2020. So we want to develop the big complex of luxury hotel rooms to meet the increasing demand of high-income visitors," he said.

Tho did not elaborate on current preparations for the development plan.

However, board chairman of Saigontourist Le Van An told the Daily on the sidelines of the meeting that "the process is going on."

The complex will cover five hectares in the new urban town, and "the city government has given the green light to our project," he said.

Tho also said the group was scaling up investment for hotel projects, putting a dab of extra quality on the picture of the hospitality industry.

For the new tourism development trend, the budget spent on each project to build new hotels and upgrade existing ones is increasing, he told reporters.

"In the past few years, we spent around VND100-150bil on each hotel project but now we are spending around US$100mil on such a project," he said, explaining that in the new stage of the development, the tourism industry must develop more new, top-quality and large-scale projects to meet higher demands of guests.

Tho said that in the second quarter of this year, the company would start work on the project to build a hotel complex on the premises of the current Kim Do Hotel and the surrounding area on HCMC's Nguyen Hue Boulevard into the complex of an office building, a trade center, and a five-star hotel of 40 stories. It will also spend around US$50mil to expand the five-star Majestic Hotel.

"We are receiving a good signal from the business sector," he said, citing strong response from customers for its new developments.

He said that in November of this year, the company would open a convention hall of 10,000 square meters, and other tourism and event-related facilities in the newly-urbanized Saigon South but now, "the hall already has full bookings until 2010."

"Business will develop when all works of the exhibition and convention center in Saigon South including three other meetings halls of 30,000 square meters and two hotels of 1,000 rooms are opened," he said.

In its list of developments in the next few years are several more high-class hotels, including one in front of the Park Hyatt Saigon Hotel, and one to expand the Oscar Hotel on Nguyen Hue Boulevard.

"We are trying our best to increase the total number of standard hotel rooms under our management to 6,000 in 2010 compared with current 4,000," he said.

Saigontourist in 2007 served over 1.56mil local and international tourists, up 6.2% compared to 2006. Its total revenue last year amounted to VND6.3tril, or nearly US$400mil.

The company expects to welcome some 1.64mil tourists in this year with total revenue of VND7.13tril.