Face-to-Face: Thijs Hendrik Schuurhuis
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Travel Daily chats with Thijs Hendrik Schuurhuis, general manager of the Boutique Hoi An Resort in Vietnam…
Q) How is Hoi An’s hotel market faring at present, and what trends are you noticing?
The Hoi An hospitality market can be described as a significant component of the modern Vietnamese economy. For all kinds of travellers, Hoi An has been merged itself as a tourist destination in Southeast Asia and is now well known worldwide. The tourism offering has been increasingly diversified. Local and international tour operators have more options to satisfy their clients. Now, more than a third of GDP in Vietnam is generated by services, which include the hotel industry. And urban investments in Hoi An has been concentrated on tourism, especially on hotel projects and homestays with a potential for growth.
During the last few years, Hoi An has seen the opening of many new small hotels and homestays, and there is clearly a market for that as many of today travellers want to stay long for a reasonable price.
Q) What are Boutique Hoi An Resort’s key guest source markets, and are you noticing any shift towards Asia’s fast-growing markets?
Our main markets since opening have been from Europe, the United Kingdom and Australia. Especially the market from the United Kingdom has picked up dramatically since the last two years. We are therefore concentrating our marketing in these parts of the world, but are also exploring new markets from South America.
Q) What is your main type of business, and is the MICE market important to your hotel?
Our MICE business is almost non-existent. Our event space is not that large, and hotels in Danang have much better facilities to held large-scale events. The resort sees a lot of FIT guests for long stays, with occasionally a small tour group. As we are situated right on the beach our guests prefer to leisure around our swimming pool or spent their time on our very large beach. We are therefore more focused in increasing our FIT bookings than MICE business.
Q) Have you seen any downturn in business from China since the recent tensions in Vietnam?
Our Asian and Chinese market is not very large. We only got few cancellations from last minute FIT bookings of Chinese guests, we therefore did not see a drop in our occupancy for May and June. July and August occupancy is unchanged and it is expected that these busy summer months will see an increase compared to last year.
Q) What further developments can we expect from Boutique Resort Hoi An in the coming months?
The development plan for the very near future is and extension of the resort with more rooms and larger and upgraded spa facilities. We are also continuing to touch up the resort and doing small renovations in our rooms and around the premises of the resort in order to keep Boutique Hoi An Resort a first class beach venue in Hoi An. Besides that, we also continue in training our staff in their skills to provide our guests with service and recognition in a traditional friendly environment.
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