HCMC will need around 27,000 more hotel rooms, with around 6,700 rooms meeting three- to five-star standards, to accommodate some seven million international tourists and 24 million domestic ones in 2020.Truong Vinh Tho, head of the Hotel Division under the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said that the hotel room demand was calculated based on the tourist growth, accommodation demand and the average length of stay.The current growth is around 10% per year for international arrivals and a slightly lower growth for domestic tourists. However, the calculation of hotel room supply is based on average growth rates of 8% and 6% for the numbers of international and domestic tourists respectively.The average length of stay is 2.6 days for international tourists and 2.5 days for domestic tourists.Tho said such figures on hotel room demand and the growth of tourist arrivals are included in the draft plan on hotel system development until 2015 and a vision towards 2020 which will be submitted to the HCMC government this quarter.HCMC currently has around 40,900 rooms, with 4,622 rooms of 61 three-star hotels, 2,114 rooms of 15 four-star hotels and 4,587 rooms of 14 five-star hotels. The remaining number of rooms belongs to hotels of lower quality.According to Tho, the development pace in the hotel sector in HCMC has slowed down in recent years, and most of the hotel projects are implemented slowly due to capital shortage and slow site clearance.Several five-star hotel projects such as the expansion of Majestic and Kim Do hotels and the construction of Pullman hotel have fallen behind schedule. In addition, the number of investors interested in this sector is fewer, Tho said.“HCMC was expected to have 11 more hotels last year, but only two hotels were finished at the year’s end. However, I believe that the implementation progress will be accelerated as existing investors are determined to speed up their unfinished projects,” he said.Although HCMC has planned to locate hotel projects in District 7 and District 2, investors still prefer developing projects in downtown areas like District 1 and District 3. In District 1 alone, there are 5-6 high-end hotels under progress, according to Tho.HCMC attracted over one million international tourists in the first quarter, and the average room occupancy rate at three- to five-star hotels has reached 68-70%.