A potential playground
The demand of relaxing at the nearby cities is real and increasing rapidly, experts and investors said at a seminar on "Tourism at Outskirts: Current Situation and Prospects”.
With the richness of natural resources, culture, cuisine and hospitality, tourism at the outskirts is very attractive, especially city dwellers who want to escape from the pressure and stress at work as well as the impact of urbanisation.
Thanks to the short distance to the city centre, tours to these sites take a short time and a cheap price to travel. That’s the advantage of this market.
"I think outskirts tourism is a necessity of society, especially the urban people, who want to travel to places not too far, not too expensive. Due to the current busy life, the need to relax is as important as eating," said Nguyễn Mạnh Thản, chairman of Hà Nội Tourism Real Estate Association.
Nguyễn Mạnh Thản, chairman of Hà Nội Tourism Real Estate Association.
Under the perspective of an investor, Nguyễn Thành Trung, Deputy director of Archi Invest JSC, acknowledged that the outskirt market helps reduce the pressure and burden for the urban market. Trung listed seven factors that will help outskirts tourism market grow dynamically in the next years.
Firstly, the large demand of tourists from city centre, neighboring regions and the world. It’s estimated that about 4.5 million of city dwellers want to travel to the suburban areas each year. On average, each person travels five or six times a year. So the market of tourism real estate at the outskirts receive 25 – 30 milion of guests each year.
According to a survey in 2017, more than 90% respondents want to go on vacation more than 10 times a year. Among them, 75% can pay VND1 million per day to relax and enjoy the trip.
“It's a huge market without competition. Because we just need to do our business well, the guests will come," Trung said.
Secondly, Trung said that the limited supply despite the big demand of luxury condominiums is a promising opportunity for investors.
"We reckoned up carefully the area around Hanoi, from Ninh Binh to Mai Chau (Hoa Binh), there are less than 1,600 resort rooms for tens of millions of visitors. It proves that the supply for this market is very weak. That’s why most visitors have to travel in one day. I believe that even if we build hard, the customers’ demand will not be met in the next 10 years."
Nguyễn Thành Trung, Deputy director of Archi Invest JSC, speaks at the seminar.
Besides, an important advantage is that suburban market is more accessible thanks to the development of infrastructure, public transport. It takes only about one hour drive to access the sites at the outskirts. In addition, Trung said another advantage of suburban resort tourism is the low cost.
"For example, hiring a three-bedroom villa at a resort, plus living expenses, takes VND1 million per guest. It is equal to an airfare to travel to Da Nang. Many people can afford that expense. So the number of visitors and trips will increase."
In addition, the suburbs of Hanoi has great advantages for developing resorts such as beautiful nature, rich culture, friendly people and diversified cuisine. It’s the good condition to develop shopping service.
With the unique potentials mentioned above, Trung said the suburban real estate market will always grow well, despite the economic fluctuations. According to Trung, when the economy goes down, many people can’t pay much to go far, they will come back to suburban tourism.
At the same time, the involvement of authorities and enterprises as well as local people is also a factor for investors to pay attention to this market.
Amorn Harnkham, former Director of Tourism Authority of Thailand, agreed. He emphasized that Hanoi is one of the best destinations in Asia for suburban tourism thanks to advantages of landscape, culture and hospitality of the people. These factors can attract a large number of international tourists.
Amorn Harnkham, former Director of Tourism Authority of Thailand.
Need to remove the knot
Apart from remarkable potential, Thản pointed out some problems such as the lack of connection between relating agencies to develop tourism effectively.
“The tourism products are built up in a very spontaneous way, not close to the need of each tourist. We should promote tourism widely.”
Luong Ngoc Khanh, general director of H&K Hospitality, said the capacity of resort real estate hasn’t been optimized because tourists often come during the weekends. During the rest of the week, the number of guests are sparse.
“The resort real estates have not meet the demand of the customers. They want to discover the local culture. The resorts have too many similarities, not much uniqueness. So they don’t impress the tourists. Investors of real estate project should bring emotion for tourists. Emotion can come from different things, for example architecture of the resort.”
Khanh said the suburban tourism will develop well, but it’s necessary to build products that attract tourists effectively.
"We should know the different demand of domestic and international visitors. Visitors from China, South Korea and Japan have different taste. We need tourists who have high spending. We should design more products to attract tourists in working days. Truong Chi Kien, owner of Yen Dung golf course project in Bac Giang province, said it’s necessary to invest more to infrastructure to attract foreign tourists to stay longer.
