M.I.K Land to develop Mövenpick Resort Phu Quoc

M.I.K Land Company signed a management contract on December 8 with Mövenpick Hotels & Resort, a Swiss hospitality group, for an integrated resort on Phu Quoc Island. M.I.K Land will become the exclusive unit developing the project while Mövenpick will be responsible for management and consulting. “Mövenpick Resort Phu Quoc will create new standards for hotels and resorts in Vietnam and bring the island onto the international tourism map,” said Deputy General Director of M.I.K Land, Mr. Le Thi Hai Chau. “We chose the group to cooperate with based on its reputation, with extensive experience in the hotel business and its rapid expansion in the Asian hotel market.” The resort is expected to be operational by 2017 on an area of about 50 ha, with around 250 rooms, 100 apartments, and 50 villas. Additional facilities include a retail area called “Swiss Village”, a water park and a pool, a spa, a 1,000 sq m conference center, a theater, an outdoor cooking school, beach clubs, children’s play areas, a water sports center, a fitness area, and adventure activities. The resort will have a vocational hospitality school with fully-equipped accommodation for students. “This attractive project will be a key project in Vietnam and is considered the first step of the group to expand its management of large-scale resorts across the region,” said CEO of Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts, Mr. Jean Gabriel Peres. On the same day M.I.K Land also signed a strategic cooperation agreement with two leading groups in construction and design consultancy - the Hoa Binh Construction Group and Baumschlager Eberle Vietnam - to implement projects of MIK Land in Vietnam.

Vietnam welcomes new landmark with ground breaking of The ONE Ho Chi Minh City

Vietnam welcomes new landmark with ground breaking of The ONE Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City, 27th April 2012 – The Bitexco Group was breaking ground on the most exciting property development in this city since the inauguration of the iconic Bitexco Financial Tower in 2010. Strategically located in the historic heart of Ho Chi Minh City, The ONE Ho Chi Minh City will be another Bitexco-led symbol of Vietnam’s emerging prominence on the global stage. 1 More than 300 guests from government ministries and the private sector have attend the significant event. They were also witness an agreement signing between the Bitexco Group and The Ritz Carlton Hotel Company LLC, under which the American luxury hotel chain will manage a six-star Ritz Carlton Hotel in The ONE Ho Chi Minh City. The 250-room hotel will be Ritz Carlton’s first in Vietnam, underlining the hotelier’s confidence in Vietnam’s business and tourism growth. During the event a Financing Investment Agreement will also take place between Mr. In-Suk Ko – CEO of Bitexco Group and Mr. Le Duc Tho – Deputy Director of Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank For Industry & Trade (Vietin Bank) 2 D3 S 0231 Resize Mr. Vu Quang Hoi, Chairman of Bitexco Group of Companies, said: “Bitexco is honoured to be the developer of The ONE Ho Chi Minh City which will raise the benchmark for luxury and sophisticated lifestyle in Vietnam. We have embarked on this journey with one of the world’s leading luxury hotel chains, Ritz Carlton, which will usher new levels of luxurious hospitality in Vietnam. Bitexco believes in partnering with the world’s best and with that, we are also confident that top tier multi-national corporations will want to take up office space in The ONE Ho Chi Minh City’’ Also in the ceremony, Bitexco Group has donated VND1 billion for Ho Chi Minh City poor people Fund and another VND 1 billion for District 1 poor people Fund. 3 The ONE Ho Chi Minh City is one of the ‘’golden sites’’ identified by the Vietnamese government’s 2020 Vision programme to improve the social, economic and lifestyle conditions of Ho Chi Minh’s population. Bounded by four major thoroughfares, namely Le Thi Hong Gam, Calmette, Pham Ngu Lao and Pho Duc Chinh, the site is located on the southern side of Ben Thanh Square, the symbolic heart of Ho Chi Minh City. It is across the famous Ben Thanh Market, a sprawling shopping complex favoured by tourists and Vietnamese alike. A mixed use development, The ONE Ho Chi Minh City is designed by award-winning US architect Bernardo Fort-Brescia of Arquitectonica. Comprising two towers connected by a podium, it boasts retail area (+/- 31.802 m²), office space (+/- 17.320 m²), luxury residences (+/- 55.040 m²) as well as the Ritz Carlton Hotel (+/- 33.940 m²). The ONE Ho Chi Minh City is scheduled for completion in 2015. Standing at 240 metres in height, the 55-storey West Tower will contain 350 luxury apartments, making it the ultimate residential address in Vietnam. The shorter 48-storey East Tower will have 12 storeys of office space in the lower floors of the block. The Ritz Carlton Hotel will be located in this block, starting from level 24 with the VIP suites on the upper most floors. Architect Mr. Fort-Brescia, drawing inspiration from the legendary dragon, used the towers to represent two dragons rising from the ground with their tails coiled and pearls dangling from their mouths. The cantilevered tops represent the dragons’ heads while the glass cubes are figurative depictions of Vietnamese pearls in the mouths of the dragons. The podium, located at the bottom of the towers signifies the coiled tails of the dragons. Said Mr. Fort-Brescia: “The cubes, which glow at night, will be easily recognised from any point in the city. These unique features add to the iconic stature of the building as a highly distinctive and prestigious address in Ho Chi Minh City.” ‘’Through the design, we want to convey a strong, convincing sense of confidence and purpose in Ho Chi Minh City and the people of Vietnam. It provides a powerful reminder to current and future generations, of Vietnam’s stature as ‘’Pearl of the Orient,’’ said Mr In-Suk Ko, CEO of Bitexco. The ONE Ho Chi Minh City will be a major transportation hub, enhancing its iconic stature. A new bus interchange and three new underground metro lines are under construction, with the latter converging under Ben Thanh Square. The ONE Ho Chi Minh City will benefit from large volume of pedestrian traffic flowing seamlessly into the building. The high footfall from office workers, tourists and Vietnamese will be a boon to retailers and food and beverage outlets in The ONE Ho Chi Minh City. The ONE Ho Chi Minh City is one of many projects under Bitexco Land’s portfolio. In 2010, it inaugurated the Bitexo Financial Tower which recently named one of the world’s top 20 most iconic skyscrapers by CNNGo, the ultimate insider’s guide to the top travel, entertainment and lifestyle experiences in Asia Pacific. Other upcoming projects include Nguyen Cu Trinh Center and the Hoang Mai Central Township. For further information, please contact: BITEXCO GROUP - Public Relations Office Ms. Vo Ngoc Lien Huong Tel: +84 8 3821 1033 (Ext: 316) Cell phone: +84 908 889 451 Email: huongvnl.info@bitexco.com.vn

Phu Quoc condotels warming up the market

15:33 | 18/03/2016 Phu Quoc condotels warming up the market Condotels in Phu Quoc are becoming increasingly attractive to foreign investors because of their location in one of the hottest tourism destinations of Vietnam as well as the prestigious developers behind them. On March 8, a Boeing 787 of Swiss airline TUI Nordic, packed with Northern European tourists, landed at Phu Quoc International Airport. A representative of the airline said that in the last months of 2016 they are going to have weekly flights to Phu Quoc. Besides being a popular destination for tourists from Russia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, Phu Quoc has recently started welcoming visitors from Europe. In the past year, many foreign airlines have opened routes or increased the frequency of flights to Phu Quoc because the infrastructure serving tourism, especially accommodation, has improved remarkably. As the island is looking forward to a boom in tourism, now is a unique time to invest in real estate here. In fact, foreign investors from a variety of countries have already shown great interest. At the beginning of 2016, an event to introduce Sun Group’s hospitality real estates in Singapore attracted representatives from more than 200 real estate companies. Leong Boon Hoe, managing director of CBRE Singapore, said that three factors making hospitality real estate in Vietnam attractive to Singaporean investors are their competitive prices, good location, and the prestige of the developers. In Singapore, a three-bedroom condotel is priced between $500,000 and $840,000 while a similar condotel in Vietnam only costs about 25 per cent of that. Sun Group’s condotels are within the resort and close to the seaside. The building density is 30 per cent, while the remaining 70 is reserved for green space and 5-star amenities. The developer commits a profit of at least 9 per cent per year for nine years, and the owner of the condotel gets 135 nights in their estate or a comparable accommodation for these nine years. Condotels are also an attractive choice compared to other investment options. If one buys a condo in the city, one remains hard-pressed to think of ways to earn a profit. In case of a condotel, the developer commits a fixed profit. Sometimes the profit one makes is even higher than the committed rate. It could reach 15 per cent per year or higher if the condotels are managed by internationally renowned hotel companies. The condotel model is a recent addition to the Vietnamese real estate scene, though enjoying international popularity for a while now. Condotels in Singapore, Boracay in Phillipines, Bali in Indonesia, and Sydney in Australia have proved extremely profitable. Condotels were hot in Vietnam five years ago, when investors raced to get their hands on condotels from international projects, such as Hyatt Regency and Azura in Danang. At that point, the price was $4,500 per square metre. At the end of 2015 condotels made a comeback with Sun Group’s Condotel Premier Residences Phu Quoc Emerald Bay project, and judging by the warm welcome of the market, one can say that condotels have not lost their shine. With not only Sun Group, but also many real estate companies, such as Vingroup and LDG Group, seeing big opportunities in the condotel segment, investments in the area are poised for a surge in 2016. By Hong An

Vietnam architecture moving on to next stage of development

Monday, Aug 3,2015,10:07 (GMT+7) Zoom in Zoom out Add to Favorites Print Send to a friend Vietnam, a land with rich cultural values, kind people and stunning landscapes, was very brave in the past. Today, Vietnam is no longer seen as a country at war, but known for its high economic growth. Recently, the legendary investment advisor Marc Faber has given his investment insight on CNBC into the Vietnam stock market. According to him, Vietnam is a country that “stands out in Asia” with its strong economic performance and reasonably priced stocks. The development and global integration have given the Vietnamese a “playground” where they show their competitiveness abroad. Some of the masterpieces in architecture in Vietnam have begun to be recognized by international institutions given its unique, creative and high-profile buildings. In Vietnam’s residential housing sector, Vo Trong Nghia is a talent in architectural practice and he has become more and more famous in international media for his creative designs. Some of his award winning projects are “Binh Thanh House”, “Bamboo wing” and “Wind and Water”. Other Vietnamese architects have also made significant achievements, including Hoang Thuc Hao and Nguyen Hoa Hiep. Bitexco Group takes pride in the 68-floor Bitexco Financial Tower, which is 262 meters tall, as an architectural symbol of HCMC In commercial building sector, Bitexco Financial Tower in Ho Chi Minh City and recently Marriott Hotel in Hanoi City are well known buildings by architecture. They have become iconic buildings in the skylines of the nation’s two biggest cities. Bitexco Financial Tower and Marriott Hanoi are been recognized not only at home but also internationally as they have won awards from professional institutions in architecture. These projects are the pride of the Vietnamese as they have been invested and developed by a young local business. The first Marriott Hotel in Vietnam, which looks like a dragon and is another iconic project developed by Bitexco Group in Hanoi With its achievement in property development, Bitexco, developer of BFT and Marriott, has proven its ability to absorb new technology from developed countries, and work with international construction partners to develop high profile and artistic buildings. Bitexco Group is proud of its 68-floor Bitexco Financial Tower as a symbol of Vietnam’s rapid economic growth, modernization, globalization and dynamism. With its graceful, statuesque and world-class design, the 262-meter-tall skyscraper is a great example of international collaboration in engineering. It is now the most prestigious business address and visitor attraction. It is the dawn for endless inspiration. Shaped like a lotus bud, Bitexco Financial Tower combines a blossoming of traditional Vietnamese culture with the nation’s progressive aspirations of today. Following the success of Bitexco Financial Tower in HCMC, Bitexco Group continued to introduce another architectural masterpiece which has been operated by JW Marriott. This is the most luxurious brand of hotel management in the world. This explains why the hotel was selected to host Manchester City team and its delegation for their three-day stay in Hanoi during their friendly match with Vietnam’s national team on 27th July. Located in the premises of the National Convention Centre, JW Marriott is called the “Dragon” hotel, as it strikes an interpretive symbol of a dragon ascending along the beautiful seashore of Vietnam. The architect of the building is Carlos Zapata, who is also the mastermind behind the Bitexco Financial Tower skyscraper in Ho Chi Minh City. The ONE, another project of Bitexco Group under construction, was recognized as “Best mixed-use architecture Vietnam 2013” by International Property Award Bitexco is about to introduce to the market another mixed-use project, called The ONE, which is opposite Ben Thanh Market. Although the project is not yet complete, it has got “Best mixed-use architecture Vietnam” from International Property Award. The architectural works that were created and owned by Vietnamese companies have gradually appeared on the global architecture map. Vietnam is now seen as an economy with impressive growth, modern infrastructure and stunning architectural buildings.

ITC Spectrum gets a stay of execution

ITC Spectrum gets a stay of execution JANUARY 7, 2013 BY VIR LEAVE A COMMENT The US’ ITC Spectrum LLC has failed to meet the deadline given by Binh Dinh Provincial People’s Committee for advancing money for land compensation costs to build two luxury hotels under Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott brands in the central province. However, the local government will not revoke the investment certificate of the investor as previously threatened. Man Ngoc Ly, director of Binh Dinh Provincial Economic Zone Management Authority, said ITC Spectrum had not transferred VND21 billion, or $1.04 million at the current exchange rate, before December 31, 2012 as committed. “The investor said they had trouble with procedures for money transfer, so that they failed to make commitment on time,” said Ly. In September 2012, Binh Dinh Provincial People’s Committee asked the investor to advance the $1.04 million sum before October 31, 2012 or the provincial committee would revoke the investment certificate of this project. But the investor asked the government to extend this deadline by the end of 2012 and this petition was approved. “Site clearance and land compensation will not complete if the investor does not advance money. We understand that they are in a difficult situation, therefore we will not withdraw the project’s investment certificate at the current time,” said Ly, adding the local authorities continue to support the investor. Under the commitment with Binh Dinh, Ly said, ITC Spectrum would have to cover all VND135 billion ($6.4 million), of compensation and site clearance costs. The $1.04 million is just a part of the total amount. Until now, only 135 out of 325 hectares of the project site have been cleared. ITC Spectrum is developing Vinh Hoi resort project through a wholly-owned subsidiary Vietnamese-American Hotel and Resort Limited Company. In 2010, Marriott International signed a management agreement with the US firm to manage the project under two luxury hotel brands including Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott. According to Marriott International, the project will be an oceanfront, fully-integrated, mixed-use development including three resorts, a championship 18-hole golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones II, residential villas, a retail village, an arboretum and other recreational amenities. However, construction of this project, licenced in 2007, has never begun due to site-clearance difficulties. In September 2012, the Vietnamese government agreed to extend lifetime of this project to 55 years from 50 to partly compensate for the time delay caused by these difficulties.

Marriott, Ritz-Carlton, Outrigger to Manage Three Resorts in Central Vietnam

AUGUST 29, 2010 BY VCCINEWS LEAVE A COMMENT Marriott International, Ritz-Carlton and Outrigger Hotels and Resorts Asia on August 24 signed deals with Vietnamese American Hotel and Resort Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of the U.S. investment firm ITC Spectrum LLC., to manage three resorts in Vietnam’s central province of Binh Dinh. Under the deals, the three world leading hotel operating companies will manage three resort projects inside what is called the $250 million Vinh Hoi Bay Golf Resort. The Outrigger Vinh Hoi Bay Resort and Spa with 210 rooms and 46 private villas will start construction in mid-2011 and is expected to open for business at the end of 2013. The 100-villa Vinh Hoi Bay – A Ritz-Carlton Reserve and the 320-room JW Marriott Vinh Hoi Bay Resort & Spa are expected to begin construction in early 2012 and be completed in 2014. Vinh Hoi Bay Golf Resort is 25 kilometers north of Quy Nhon City and 20 minutes away from Phu Cat Airport in the central province. “Ritz-Carlton and Outrigger are two new tourism brands in Vietnam and we are very pleased to have these prestigious American brands be a part of the Vinh Hoi Bay development,” Tran Duc Canh, chairman and CEO of Vietnamese-American Hotel and Resort, said at the signing ceremony. “We are delighted with this visionary opportunity to further expand our lodging portfolio in Vietnam. These resorts will rank among the best, most luxurious properties in Asia,” Edwin Fuller from Marriott International noted. (Young People, www.dtinews.vn)

Crowne Plaza® Hotel to Phu Quoc

IHG & M.I.K Corporation to Bring First Crowne Plaza® Hotel to Phu Quoc Island New 300-room Crowne Plaza Phu Quoc Starbay to welcome guests in 2017 InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG®), one of the world's leading hotel companies, has signed a management agreement with leading real-estate investor and developer in Vietnam, M.I.K Corporation (M.I.K), for a 300-room Crowne Plaza hotel on the island of Phu Quoc. Crowne Plaza Phu Quoc Starbay will be one of IHG's first hotels in Phu Quoc and the company's third Crowne Plaza in Vietnam, joining Crowne Plaza West Hanoi and Crowne Plaza Danang. Slated to open in 2017, Crowne Plaza Phu Quoc Starbay will be part of the new Star Bay/Green Hill development, which will also feature a lagoon, beach village and a range of shops, restaurants and bars. The hotel, which is accessible via major highways, is close to both the island’s town centre of Duong Dong and the new Phu Quoc International Airport, making it a prime venue for corporate and leisure events. As one of the most reputable meetings hotel brands in the world, the Crowne Plaza hotel will have a business centre to address guests' business needs during their holiday. A dedicated meeting and events team will also be on site to help clients plan and transform the hotel’s six meeting spaces to suit a variety of event needs. One of the main highlights of the hotel will be a beautiful wedding chapel, ideal for couples looking for a unique wedding destination. After a romantic beachside nuptial, the bridal couple and their guests can adjourn to the 240-seater ballroom for the evening banquet to round up the night. Located along the coast of Dai Beach in north-west Phu Quoc, guests will be steps away from stunning beaches offering pristine white sand and clear waters for an afternoon of lounging, snorkelling and scuba diving. Dai Beach was ranked “Top 100 Beaches” by CNN in 2013 and “Top 5 Hidden Beaches” by ABC News in 2008. The hotel’s all-day dining, beachside specialty restaurant, “Surf Shack” and pool bar will provide guests with a great choice of options for meal times, and with a fully equipped fitness centre, outdoor pool, spa and kid’s club, there will be something for everyone who comes to stay. Leanne Harwood, Vice President, Operations, South East Asia, IHG said: “Phu Quoc is going through exciting times. We've seen the positive impact that development of the new international airport has bought, and the upcoming expansion of the cruise terminal will also help drive tourism. The visa-free entry for a series of travellers has also helped growth in visitor arrivals. We're entering Phu Quoc at a great time and couldn't have asked for a better location on the island to open Crowne Plaza Phu Quoc Starbay with M.I.K Corporation." John Lim, CEO, M.I.K Corporation, said: “We are delighted to work with IHG – the world's largest hotel company – to bring the first Crowne Plaza hotel to Phu Quoc. The island is growing as a tourism destination and as one of the few hotels in the market with a range of meetings and events facilities, Crowne Plaza Phu Quoc Starbay will be in a great position to cater to the growth in business and leisure travellers." Crowne Plaza, a trusted name for business travellers worldwide, is one of the fastest growing hotel brands in the world with more than 400 hotels open in over 65 countries, with 92 hotels due to open in the next three to five years. IHG has six hotels open across two brands in Vietnam: two Crowne Plaza hotels and four InterContinental hotels and resorts with a further seven hotels and resorts in the development pipeline.

SONASEA VILLAS & RESORTS

TỔNG QUAN DỰ ÁN SONASEA VILLAS & RESORTS + Sáng ngày 25/09/2014 tại Hà Nội đã diễn ra Lễ ký kết hợp đồng Tổng thầu xây dựng dự án Novotel Phú Quốc Resorts giữa Công ty Coteccons và Công ty Cổ phần đầu tư C.E.O. Thuộc khu vực Bãi Trường – Một trong những bãi biển đẹp nhất Phú Quốc, Novotel Phú Quốc Resortslà một hạng mục của khu nghỉ dưỡng Sonasea Villas and Resorts, dự án được xây dựng thành khu nghỉ dưỡng cao cấp gồm 44 villas, một khách sạn 05 tầng với 360 phòng nghỉ dưỡng theo tiêu chuẩn quốc tế.sonasea phú quốc + Dự án do Công ty Cổ phần đầu tư C.E.O làm chủ đầu tư – một thành viên của CEO Group đang sở hữu 03 dự án lớn tại Phú Quốc: Sonasea Villas & Resort, Sonasea Residences, Sonasea Golf Estates, trong đó khu du lịch nghỉ dưỡng Sonasea Villas & Resort đang được CEO Group tập trung triển khai mạnh mẽ, nhằm mục đích sớm đáp ứng nhu cầu du lịch, nghỉ dưỡng ngày càng lớn tại Phú Quốc của du khách trong và ngoài nước. Được biết ngày 29/9/2014 Cổ phiếu của C.E.O Group cũng chính thức được niêm yết tại Sở Giao dịch Chứng khoán Hà Nội (mã chứng khoán CEO). Với tiềm năng phát triển, trong ngày giao dịch đầu tiên CEO giao dịch với mức giá trần là 15.000 đồng/cổ phiếu, dư mua hơn 2 triệu cổ phiếu. - Hiện nay tại Phú Quốc, Coteccons đang gấp rút hoàn thành để bàn giao Khu nghỉ dưỡng 5 sao Salinda Resort & Spa Phú Quốc, cùng với sự kiện tổng thầu dự án Novotel Phú Quốc Resorts sẽ tiếp tục khẳng định uy tín và thương hiệu Coteccons tại thị trường này. dự án sonasea phú quốc Dự kiến 30/4/2015 sẽ cất nóc công trình khách sạn 5 tầng, cuối 2015 sẽ hoàn thành khu resort này và đưa vào hoạt động Lễ ký kết hợp đồng Tổng thầu xây dựng dự án Novotel Phú Quốc Resorts. Thông Tin Dự án: + Vị trí: Khu phức hợp Bãi Trường, Xã Dương Tơ, Huyện Phú Quốc, Tỉnh Kiên Giang. + Chủ đầu tư: Cty CP Đầu tư & Phát triển Phú Quốc (CEO Phú Quốc) - Thành viên của CEO Group + Thiết kế: Kume Sekkei Co. (Nhật Bản). + Gói thầu: Tổng thầu thi công. + Thời gian thi công: 15 tháng. Sonasea Villas and Resorts là một trung tâm dịch vụ du lịch cao cấp với các loại sản phẩm đa dạng: du lịch sinh thái, nghỉ dưỡng, vui chơi giải trí, khách sạn,…bán đất phú quốc. dự án sonasea phú quốc Thông số kỹ Thuật 1. Tên dự án: Khu tổ hợp du lịch Sonasea Villas and Resorts 2. Quy mô:Khu tổ hợp du lịch Sonasea Villas and Resorts nằm trên khuôn viên đất 79,9810 ha 3. Vị trí: dự án sonasea villas & resorts toạ lạc ngay Khu phức hợp Bãi Trường, Xã Dương Tơ, huyện Phú Quốc, tỉnh Kiên Giang có 02 mặt Đông và Tây giáp núi và biển, Bắc và Nam giáp 02 dự án phức hợp về nghĩ dưỡng và du lịch SƠ ĐỒ QUY HOẠCH CHI TIẾT TỪNG PHÂN KHU CHÚC NĂNG CỦA SONASEA VILLAS AND RESORTS Dự án Khu tổ hợp du lịch Sonasea Villas & Resorts tọa lạc tại bãi Trường - đây là một trong những bãi biển dài và đẹp nhất Phú Quốc với bờ biển tự nhiên trải dài gần 1 km, Sonasea Villas & Resorts sở hữu một ví trí đắc địa nhất về phong thủy “Lưng tựa núi, mặt hướng biển”. Với quy mô 79,9810 ha và tổng vốn đầu tư dự kiến hơn 4.500 tỷ đồng, Khu tổ hợp du lịch Sonasea Phú Quốc được xây dựng là một trung tâm dịch vụ du lịch cao cấp với các loại sản phẩm đa dạng như: du lịch sinh thái, nghỉ dưỡng, vui chơi giải trí, khách sạn, ….bán đất phú quốc Dự án được chia làm 03 phân kỳ đầu tư: + Phân kỳ 1: Từ quý IV/2012 đến quý IV/2014: Chuẩn bị đầu tư và đâu tư xây dựng 40% hạ tầng khung của dự án, đầu tư 01 Khu Resort mặt biển + Phân kỳ 2: Từ quý I/2015 – quý IV/2017: Đầu tư xây dựng 60% hạ tầng khung của dự án, đầu tư 01 Khu Resort mặt biển. + Phân kỳ 3: Từ quý I/2018 đến quý IV năm 2019: Đầu tư xây dựng Khu biệt thự nghỉ dưỡng và các phần công trình kiến trúc còn lại của dự án. THÔNG TIN LIÊN HỆ DỰ ÁN SONASEA VILLAS & RESORTS Hotline : 0908929992 - 0902553525 Tham khảo thêm >>> Vị trí Dự án. Tiện ích Dự án.Thiết kế Dự án. Tiến độ Thanh Toán .hình ảnh tại dự án.Thông tin liên hệ. bán đất phú quốc, nhà đất phú quốc, bán đất lâm đồng, nhà đất lâm đồng

PQ vs Singapore

Phú Quốc Island in Vietnam Phú Quốc is a Vietnamese island off the coast of Cambodia in the Gulf of Thailand, known for its white-sand beaches and resorts, most of which are along the palm-lined southwest coast. More than half of the island’s landmass is part of a national park featuring dense jungle and mountains, popular for motorbiking, hiking and wildlife viewing. Area: 221.6 mi² Max length: 31.07 mi Max width: 15.53 mi Province: Kiên Giang Province Population: 103,000 (2012) ISO 3166 code: Kiên Giang Province Country Vietnam Region Mekong Delta Area • Total 593.05 km2 (228.98 sq mi) Population (2012) • Total 103,000 • Density 170/km2 (450/sq mi) Demographics • Ethnicities Vietnamese (100%) Time zone ICT (UTC+7) Calling code 773 ISO 3166 code VN-47 Website www.kiengiang.gov.vn ------------ Singapore Area -Total 719.1 km2[9] (190th)v278 sq mi Population • 2015[9] estimate 5,535,000 (113th) • Density 7,697/km2 (3rd) 19,910/sq mi

DỰ ÁN Grand World Phú Quốc

Dự án Grand World Toạ lạc tại Bãi Dài Phú Quốc. Bãi Dài được khá nhiều du khách trong và ngoài nước biết đến, được bình chọn đứng đầu trong 13 bãi biển đẹp và hoang sơ nhất thế giới do tạp chí ABC News bình chọn + Giá bán & Phương thức thanh toán: - Giá bán khởi điểm: 2,5 tỷ/căn Tuỳ Theo Vị Trí - Với diện tích 41 m2 - 71 m2, giá bán từ khoảng 2,5 tỷ/ căn Khu condotel tiêu chuẩn 5 sao Đầu tiên tại Phú Quốc, thanh toán linh hoạt Cam kết lợi nhuận 8%/năm trong 3 năm đầu. Từ năm thứ 4 trở đi, phân chia lợi nhuận 75% - 25%. I / Tổng quan dự án Grand World Phú Quốc: - Chủ đầu tư: Công ty CP Địa ốc Long Điền (công ty thành viên của Tập đoàn Đất Xanh) - Vị trí: Bãi Dài, Phú Quốc, Kiên Giang, Việt Nam - Quy mô: 85.000m2 - Vốn đầu tư: 4.600 tỷ đồng - Biệt thự nghỉ dưỡng: 447 căn (bao gồm: biệt thự hướng biển, biệt thự trên vịnh biển, biệt thự trên đồi, biệt thự nằm dưới tán cây rừng nguyên sinh) - Khu dịch vụ lưu trú & khách sạn tiêu chuẩn 5 sao: 496 căn (Hiện đang trong giai đoạn kinh doanh cho đặt chổ ưu tiên chọn căn) Mặt bằng tổng thể Khu du lịch - nghỉ dưỡng sinh thái Grand World Phú Quốc + Dự án biệt thự biển Grand World Phú Quốc của LDG Group (Đây là công ty thành viên của Tập Đoàn Đất Xanh) có tổng vốn đầu tư hơn 4.600 tỷ đồng với quy mô rộng 85 ha. Dự án Grand World Phú Quốc là tổng thể hoàn hảo tạo nên khu nghĩ dưỡng cao cấp bao gồm các biệt thự riêng biệt, khu dân cư cao cấp, khu trung tâm thương mại – dịch vụ, Khu vui chơi giải trí – cộng đồng, khu khách sạn 5 sao và hệ thống bunggalow cao cấp nằm hướng biển trong xanh và đẹp như thiên đường. + Đặc biệt, Grand World nằm ngay trung tâm khu quy hoạch tổng thể thương mại dịch vụ cao cấp của Phú Quốc, liền kề khu nghỉ dưỡng Vinpearl kết nối với hệ thống 16 sân golf liên hoàn, nhiều dự án trung tâm hội nghị, thương mại, khách sạn 5 sao cao cấp khác. Đồng thời dự án nằm kế bên Khu casino được xây dựng trên khuôn viên 37ha có từ 200 - 400 bàn đánh bạc, 2000 máy chơi bạc sẽ là điểm đến của nhiều du khách trong nước cũng như quốc tế. + Với tiềm năng phát triển du lịch - nghỉ dưỡng đang tăng trưởng tốt tại Phú Quốc thì Grand World Phú Quốc cam kết sẽ mang lại lợi nhuận đáng kể cho các nhà đầu tư nắm bắt trước xu thế đầu tư bất động sản 2015 - 2020, đầu tư vào bất động sản nghỉ dưỡng. II / Vị trí Grand World Phú Quốc: Dự án Grand World tọa lạc tại Bãi Dài - một trong Top 10 bãi biển đẹp nhất thế giới, xung quanh là biển bao bọc nên khí hậu quanh năm mát mẻ. Địa thế hiếm có tạo nên giá trị độc tôn cho khu biệt thự nghỉ dưỡng Grand World. Khách thăm quan, nghỉ dưỡng và sử dụng các tiện ích ở Bãi Dài đều phải đi qua Khu du lịch nghỉ dưỡng Grand World (vị trí đắc địa). Với vị trí đắc địa, từ Grand World Phú Quốc có thể tận hưởng thêm những tiện ích liên kết vùng như: - Tuyến du lịch Bắc đảo từ Bãi Dài qua Gành Dầu tham quan các di tích lịch sử, văn hóa. - Đến Rạch Vẹm tham quan các khu nuôi trồng thủy hải sản, làng chài. - Đến Rạch Tràm tham quan các khu rừng ngập mặn với tràm cổ thụ, cốc đỏ nguyên sinh,... - Các chuyến du khảo, khám phá thiên nhiên trong rừng phòng hộ Phú Quốc với nhiều hệ sinh thái rừng như: rừng trên núi đá, rừng thứ sinh, rừng nguyên sinh trên dãy Ba Hòn Dung, dãy Bãi Đại,... - Tổ chức các tuyến tham quan văn hóa - lịch sử, mua sắm tại trung tâm đô thị lớn của Phú Quốc như: Cửa Cạn (10km), Dương Đông (20km),... Cùng với vẻ đẹp nguyên sơ của rừng và biển nơi Grand World tọa lạc kết hợp với không gian của các tiện ích tiện nghi, hiện đại,... Khu du lịch & Biệt thự nghỉ dưỡng Grand World Phú Quốc sẽ trở thành "ngôi nhà thứ hai" giúp du khách quên đi mọi ưu phiền để hòa mình vào thiên nhiên, tận hưởng những dịch vụ của một khu du lịch cao cấp hàng đầu tại hòn đảo được mệnh danh là Singapore thứ 2 của Châu Á. Vị trí khu biệt thự nghỉ dưỡng Grand World Phú Quốc III / Tiện ích khu biệt thự nghỉ dưỡng Grand World: + Phú Quốc là đảo lớn nhất của Việt Nam với những bãi biển hoang sơ và đầy quyến rũ, tại đây có đa dạng các loài sinh vật biển quý hiếm và những rạn san hô rực rỡ nhiều sắc màu. Cùng với đó là những khu rừng nguyên sinh nằm trong khu dự trữ sinh quyển thế giới cần được bảo tồn. Chính vì vậy mà Phú Quốc được đánh giá là một viên ngọc giữa biển khơi của Việt Nam. + Dự án Grand World Phú Quốc tọa lạc trên Bãi Dài – một trong 10 bãi biển được BBC bình chọn là đẹp và hoang sơ nhất trên thế giới. Với vị trí nằm ở phía Tây Bắc của đảo Phú Quốc, nên quý khách khi chọn mua biệt thự tại đây sẽ rất thuận tiện trong việc di chuyển tới các điểm thăm quan du lịch trên đảo như: Vườn Quốc Gia Phú Quốc, làng chài Hàm Ninh… Và chủ trương của của LDG khi thực hiện dự án cũng sẽ giữ nguyên bản khu rừng nguyên sinh để tạo cảnh quan như thuở sơ khai thiên nhiên ban tặng cho khu vực này. Tiện ích bao gồm khu casino có khuôn viên rộng 37 ha, khu dịch vụ cao cấp, khu vui chơi giải trí Vinpearl, sân golf 27 lỗ, khu công viên - vườn thú Safari… Nơi đây sẽ trở thành điểm đến hấp dẫn của nhiều du khách trong nước và quốc tế. IV / Thiết kế Grand World Phú Quốc: Giai đoạn 01: Xây dựng và hoàn thiện 33 biệt thự nghỉ dưỡng dạng đơn lập hướng biến. Trong đó có 28 căn biệt thự có 03 phòng ngủ; 04 căn có 04 phòng ngủ; 01 biệt thự tổng thống. Các biệt thự được xây dựng trên diện tích đất từ 595m2 – 1.470m2. Các căn biệt thự ở đây được bố trí hợp lý gồm có: phòng ngủ, bể bơi riêng, phòng khách, bếp và phòng ăn, phòng tắm và sân vườn. Tính đến thời điểm tháng 12/2014 thì các căn biệt thự đã hoàn thiện nội thất và ngoại thất hoàn chỉnh. Giai đoạn 02: Xây dựng và hoàn thiện 231 biệt thự nghỉ dưỡng dạng đơn lập hướng biển. Trong đó có: + 11 căn biệt thự mẫu 3 phòng ngủ 2 tầng + 48 căn biệt thự mẫu 2 – 2 phòng ngủ 1 tầng + 126 căn biệt thự mẫu 3 – 3 phòng ngủ 2 tầng + 46 căn biệt thự mẫu 4 – 4 phòng ngủ 2 tầng Các biệt thự ở Grand World Phú Quốc được xây dựng trên diện tích đất từ 376m2 - 782m2,dự kiến bàn giao vào tháng 08/2015 khi đã hoàn thiện nội thất và ngoại thất. Các căn biệt thự ở đây cũng sẽ được bố trí hợp lý gồm có: phòng ngủ, bể bơi riêng, phòng khách, bếp và phòng ăn,... + Những Lý do nên chọn Grand World Phú Quốc là nơi đầu tư bất động sản nghĩ dưỡng: - Phú Quốc là khu dự trữ sinh thái biển lớn và có bờ biển nằm trong Top 10 đẹp nhất thế giới. - Phú Quốc là nơi có thể thoả sức ngắm bình mình và cả hoàng hôn trên bờ biển. - Phú Quốc có bờ biển dài đến 150km. - Phú Quốc nằm trong vịnh Thái Lan nên hầu như không có bão. - Phú Quốc được chính Phủ đầu tư để trở thành 1 trong 3 đặc khu kinh tế của Việt Nam. - Phú Quốc được chính phủ ưu đãi thuế quan (chỉ còn 10%). - Phú Quốc được miễn VISA cho khách nước ngoài 30 ngày. - Phú Quốc vị trí chiến lược sẽ là trung tâm trung chuyển quốc tế. Mọi thông tin chi tiết về dự án,đăng ký chọn vị trí ưu tiên và đăng ký tham quan dự án Qúy Khách xin vui lòng liên hệ: Phòng Kinh Doanh Dự Án: Liên Hệ Anh Duy: 0908929992 - 0902 55 35 25

Phu Quoc Island projects lay idle

Phu Quoc Island projects lay idle More than 100 hospitality and entertainment projects on Phu Quoc Island with the combined pledged capital of around $6 billion have been licenced, but few have been carried out due to underdeveloped infrastructure and the high cost of labour. Investment into hospitality and entertainment on the island is not only already high, it is still on the rise. Vingroup is opening a VND17 trillion ($805.7 million) Vinpearl resort this coming November. It includes 750 rooms and 30 villas and is the group’s largest hotel ever and the biggest 5-star project on the island thus far. Over the next few months two smaller projects, the Salinda and Famiana resorts will also open. Among the pledged projects are a 100-hectare five-star resort by SunGroup and a VND500 billion ($23.7 million) Novotel hotel by CEO Group. The Novotel is part of the VND4.5 trillion ($213.3 million) 80-hectare Sonasea Villas & Resort. Both Sungroup and CEO’s projects are slated for opening by the end of next year. Nearby, Nam Cuong Group has just finished site clearance on its 32-hectare resort area and will start construction of the VND3.2 trillion ($151.7 million) hotel and villa project at the end of this year. BIM group has invested VND1.5 trillion ($71.1 million) to build a Crowne Plaza hotel that will include nearly 500 rooms, as well as apartments and villas. Over the next two years, Phu Quoc expects to add between 1,500 and 2,000 additional 4 and 5-star hotel rooms. Currently the islands has nearly 1,000 rooms below 4-star. The country’s airlines are similarly targeting the island with increased flights and bigger aircraft and all of the aforementioned developments have helped the number of visitors rise substantially. However, hotel room rates have skyrocketed to some of the highest in Vietnam. While many big projects have been registered and are moving forward, many others have been suspended or are progressing slowly. Hong Kong’s Millennium Group’s $1.6 billion, 520-hectare Bai Dai Resort project is about to have its licence revoked due to a lack of progress, six years after it was approved. In the middle of 2013, the Kien Giang Provincial People’s Committee revoked the $2 billion Asia Pearl project. Proposed by Switzerland’s Trustee Suisse and Vinaconex R&D JSC at the end of 2007, the project has lain dormant. One reason for the slow implementation of pledged projects, according to research by CBRE, is the underdevelopment of the island’s infrastructure. The island lacks crucial elements such as asphalt roads. A 100km road project, which is key to the island’s infrastructure, is being built, but very slowly. Another major issue is that the plan has been regularly changed. “Another reason is the lack of high-quality labour,” said Mauro Gasparotti, executive director of Vietnam-based property consultancy firm Alternaty. Investors are spending too much money on training and are paying high wages and incentives to attract staff to the island. Despite government incentives such as 10 per cent corporate income tax for the lifespan of the project, compared to 22 per cent on the mainland), a 50 per cent exemption on personal income tax for Vietnamese workers, and a visa exemption for tourists staying less than 30 days, investors are still hesitant to carry out their projects. Phu Quoc is an island paradise that is less than 2 hours by air from popular other tourist destinations and major cities in Southeast Asia, but the number of tourists to the island remains quite low at around 600,000 per year, 20 per cent of whom are foreigners. Tourists usually stay only 2-3 days and few return because of the lack of tourism products and entertainment options. By Thiet Moc Lan

Marriott to open shortly on Phu Quoc Island

Sun Group's resort project's construction is on schedule and will open soon, though no exact date has been set. Quynh Nguyen The Marriott resort project on Phu Quoc Island, invested by the Sun Group, will be opened in the near future, according to a representative from the Group. Though not disclosing the exact date of the opening, the representative told VET that the project was being constructed quickly to ensure its opening is on schedule. After completion the Marriott in Phu Quoc Island with have a design far beyond the Sun Group’s impressive InterContinental Da Nang Sun Peninsula Resort. The first Ritz Carlton hotel project in Vietnam is also being invested by the Sun Group on Phu Quoc Island. Sun Group is one of the largest real estate groups in Vietnam and the biggest investor in central Da Nang city, with dozens of projects in hotels, resorts, amusement parks, and urban areas, including the InterContinental Da Nang Sun Peninsula Resort, the Novotel Da Nang Premier Han River, the Premier Village Da Nang resort, and Ba Na Hills Da Nang. The Group will soon launch several projects of large-scale, such as Ha Long Ocean Park, with investment capital of VND6 trillion ($276 million), and a cable car to the top of Mt. Fansipan, at a height of 3,143 meters above sea level, near Sa Pa in northern Lao Cai province.

Sun Group and AccorHotels sign strategic agreement

AccorHotels to provide management consulting to Sun Group's impressive portfolio of hotels and resorts around Vietnam. Thu Hoang Sun Group signed a strategic cooperation agreement with AccorHotels on October 26 in management consulting at its hotels and resorts. The agreement targets to establish and elevate service quality at Sun Group’s resorts and hotels in accordance with international standards and to maintain such standards, Vice President and Managing Director of Sun Group, Mr. Dang Minh Truong, said at the signing ceremony. AccorHotels will provide initial consultancy on services and operational management for Premier Village Phu Quoc Resort, which has more than 100 seaside villas, and The Sebel Phu Quoc, which has over 500 apartments and hotel rooms on Phu Quoc Island. It will also continue to cooperate with Sun Group in its upcoming MGallery project in the popular hill retreat of Sapa in Vietnam’s northern mountainous area. AccorHotels earlier participated in managing a number of hotels and resorts developed by Sun Group, such as Premier Village Danang Resort, Novotel Danang Premier Han River, Mercure Danang French Village, Ba Na Hills Mountain Resort, and Pullman Danang Beach Resort. Sun Group is one of the largest real estate groups in Vietnam and the biggest investor in central Da Nang city, with dozens of notable projects in hotels, resorts, amusement parks, and urban areas such as InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula Resort, Harnn Heritage Spa, Ba Na Hills Mountain Resort, and Asia Park, etc. AccorHotels is one of leading hotel managers in the world, with 3,700 hotels in 92 countries. In Vietnam it manages 20 hotels such as Sofitel Legend, Sofitel, MGallery, Pullman, Grand Mercure, The Sebel, and Novotel, etc.

HUD sai phạm hàng loạt

'Ông lớn' HUD sai phạm hàng loạt, nợ nần nghìn tỷ - Theo báo cáo của Thanh tra Chính phủ, đến nay các khoản nợ phải trả của HUD là hơn 6.600 tỷ đồng, khả năng thanh toán nợ khó khăn do mất cân đối dòng tiền, tồn kho nhiều (hơn 4.300 tỷ đồng) thanh khoản chậm; nợ công trình hạ tầng chưa xây dựng hơn 4.500 tỷ đồng... Petrolimex lỗ nghìn tỷ từ công ty con nước ngoài K +: Độc quyền vẫn lỗ ngàn tỷ Trước giờ tăng giá xăng, giảm thuế mạnh vẫn lỗ 2000 đồng Xem bài khác trên Vef.vn Cụ thể, dự án Việt Hưng (Hà Nội) do Tổng công ty Đầu tư phát triển nhà và đô thị (HUD) làm chủ đầu tư, thiếu nguồn vốn để xây dựng hoàn trả khối lượng các hạng mục công trình hạ tầng còn nợ và khối lượng giải phóng mặt bằng của dự án chưa thực hiện lên tới 1.099 tỷ đồng. Nguyên nhân của việc thiếu nguồn vốn do trích thiếu chi phí phải trả quá nhiều. Theo Thanh tra Chính phủ, việc xác định giá vốn sai dẫn đến xác định giá bán kinh doanh cho dự án thấp hơn mức phải thực hiện, làm giảm doanh thu và kết quả kinh doanh của HUD. Đây là một trong những nguyên nhân dẫn đến tình trạng khó khăn của HUD hiện nay. Tại dự án khu đô thị mới Văn Quán (Hà Đông), HUD đã bổ sung vốn điều lệ từ lợi nhuận kinh doanh dự án khi chưa quyết toán không đúng chỉ đạo của Thủ tướng; đầu tư xây dựng sai quy định, quy hoạch chi tiết được duyệt, xây dựng tăng căn hộ và tăng diện tích sàn chung cư để kinh doanh thu lợi... hud, tổng công ty nhà ở, phát triển nhà ở, dự án nhà ở, khu đô thị việt hưng, dự án văn quán, khu-đô-thị-mới, văn-quán, dự-án-nhà-ở, khu-đô-thị-việt-hưng HUD thí điểm mô hình tập đoàn Đầu tư vào Công ty CP phát triển nhà xã hội HUD.VN hơn 161 tỷ đồng, HUD.VN đã sử dụng hầu hết các nguồn vốn góp cùng HUD mua đất để thực hiện dự án Ánh Dương và thực hiện các dự án ủy quyền đầu tư kinh doanh sai quy định, dẫn đến tài chính khó khăn, kinh doanh trì trệ, không hiệu quả kéo dài, lãng phí vốn đầu tư. Theo Thanh tra Chính phủ, thông qua hoạt động ủy quyền đầu tư kinh doanh, HUD đã chuyển giao cho các công ty thành viên cả những diện tích đã được nhà nước miễn không thu tiền để đầu tư kinh doanh nhà theo giá thị trường. Không thực hiện đúng nghĩa vụ xây dựng căn hộ chung cư cao tầng để bán và cho thuê đối với đối tượng gặp khó khăn về nhà ở, không giao tầng 1 các chung cư cho TP. Hà Nội theo quy định. Chưa hết, HUD còn thiếu trách nhiệm đối với việc trích trước chi phí trọng yếu trong kinh doanh bất động sản vào giá vốn kinh doanh. HUD đã hạch toán trích trước chi phí phải trả vào giá vốn kinh doanh hàng kỳ theo suất đầu tư mét vuông đất, mét vuông nhà phân bổ trên cơ sở tổng mức đầu tư các dự án sai với quy định phải căn cứ chi phí phát sinh và dự toán công trình. Ngoài ra, HUD đã đầu tư ra ngoài doanh nghiệp nhiều khoản nhưng hiệu quả kém và nột số khoản thâm hụt mất vốn. Việc đầu tư vào Công ty CP xi măng Sông Thao 516, 550 tỷ đồng nhưng do dự án chậm tiến độ, chi phí phát sinh sớm nên đến cuối năm 2012, lỗ luỹ kế 305 tỷ đồng (bằng 45% vốn đầu tư của chủ sở hữu). HUD góp vốn vào Công ty CP Thép Sông Hồng 46,217 tỷ đồng từ tháng 5/2005 1/2007 đã thoả thuận thoái vốn nhưng đến nay không thu hồi được và chưa xử lý; đầu tư ngoài ngành nghề kinh doanh vào Quỹ Đầu tư Việt Nam 72 tỷ đồng (năm 2006), đến thời điểm kiểm tra (8/2013) chưa thu được hiệu quả,... Đến nay các khoản nợ phải trả của HUD hơn 6.600 tỷ đồng, khả năng thanh toán nợ khó khăn do mất cân đối dòng tiền, tồn kho nhiều (hơn 4.300 tỷ đồng) thanh khoản chậm; nợ công trình hạ tầng chưa xây dựng và quá hạn bàn giao cho địa phương khối lượng lớn, trị giá hơn 4.500 tỷ đồng; hạch toán kinh doanh không chính xác, ghi nhận thiếu chi phí trước và chi phí dự phòng hơn 1.200 tỷ đồng dẫn đến phản ánh kết quả kinh doanh sai lệch. Năm 2010, HUD được Chính phủ phê duyệt thí điểm đề án thành lập Tập đoàn Phát triển nhà và đô thị Việt Nam do HUD làm nòng cốt cùng với sự tham gia của một số doanh nghiệp hoạt động trong cùng lĩnh vực thuộc Bộ Xây dựng. Sau gần 2 năm, 2 mô hình thí điểm này nhận lệnh kết thúc, HUD cũng được thành lập trên cơ sở tổ chức lại Công ty mẹ - Tập đoàn HUD và các đơn vị thành viên của tổng HUD trước đây. Duy Anh

Phu Quoc boasts investment boom

10:34 | 21/04/2015 Phu Quoc boasts investment boom Phu Quoc island, located off the coast of the Mekong Delta province of Kien Giang, is experiencing booming investment into tourism and hospitality, opening unparalleled opportunities for investors. Construction of the high-end 400-room Novotel Phu Quoc Resort is in full swing, with the project set for opening by the end of this year. Just five months after its groundbreaking ceremony, the shell of 44 villas has been completed, while construction of the five-story hotel has reached the fourth floor, with the building expected to top out by the end of this month. With 700 hectares of land in the country's north and south, private developer CEO Group is still focusing its business on Phu Quoc. CEO is ramping up efforts to develop the $200 million Sonasea Villas & Resorts complex which covers 80ha. The Novotel Phu Quoc Resort is part of this integrated complex. CEO Group chairman Doan Van Binh said he believed that Phu Quoc tourism would soon step into a growth acceleration period and the group was ideally placed to exploit this opportunity. However, CEO Group is a relative late-comer compared to Vingroup, Vietnam’s largest property developer. Late last year, Vingroup inaugurated the first phase of its Vinpearl Resort Phu Quoc complex which features 606 hotel rooms, 33 luxury villas, the entertainment area Vinpearl Land, and a classy 27-hole golf course. Contractors are also in top gear to launch the additional Vinpearl Premium hotel and 231 villas this August. An international-standard 150-bed Vinmec hospital is also projected to open in mid-2015. Vingroup has also got the go-ahead to pump more than VND1.6 trillion ($74.7 million) into building Phu Quoc passenger seaport under a build-transfer form, and it also envisages turning 80ha land, part of former Duong Dong airport, into a shopping centre to supposedly boost the island’s charm. Vingroup’s interest in Phu Quoc has inspired other players, both domestic and international, to flock to the once unspoilt island. Besides newly-opened hotels owned by local firms such as Salinda, Eden, The Shells, and Famiana, global leading hotel operators have also made forays into Phu Quoc. Premier brands Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott are set to open two complexes in the south of the island next year. Meanwhile, InterContinental – which has been operating three eponymous hotel complexes in Vietnam – is joining hands with local partner BIM Group to build a mixed development with nearly 500 hotel rooms, apartments, and villas in the district. Earlier this year, the prime minister also gave an in-principle approval for a casino on the island which is expected to attract even more high-class investors. Firms like CEO Group, Vingroup, and BIM Group have bet on Phu Quoc ventures because “It is now an ideal time to invest in Phu Quoc as the island is set to become a ‘new Bali’ or ‘Phuket’ in the future,” as Binh claimed. Located just an hour away from Ho Chi Minh City and just over one and half hours from Hanoi, Phu Quoc has been dubbed a resort paradise comparable to Bali or Phuket. The island boasts stunning beaches and is a potential candidate to grow into one of the first special administrative-economic zones in the country. Thanks to improved infrastructure, major investors have flocked to Phu Quoc in recent years. To date, 202 investment projects have received investment approval, 143 of which have investment certificates worth $6.5 billion in total committed capital.The bottlenecks once hindering the island’s development – namely access to the island and its infrastructure system – are now being removed. Phu Quoc international airport opened in late 2012 after undergoing a comprehensive overhaul. It is now accessible to big aircraft such as the 160-180 seat Airbus 320s. Previously, only 70-90 planes could land on Phu Quoc due to its small airport. The island’s transport infrastructure has also seen noticeable improvements with a huge funding injection from the state budget. Power prices have also plummeted after the island was connected the national grid last year. By Giang Son

Eastin Duyen Ha Resort Cam Ranh

http://www.eastinhotelsresidences.com/eastinduyenharesortcamranh/ A 450-key beach front Eastin Duyen Ha Resort will consist of 250 superior, 100 deluxe, 2 penthouse suite, 70 garden deluxe and 28 garden suites with many facilities including an all day dining restaurant, two specialty restaurants, outdoor swimming pool with bar, a lounge bar, gym and spa facilities with 10 treatment rooms, kids and activity room, 1,200 sqm ballroom with 4 breakout rooms. Opening First Quarter Of 2017 Duyen Ha Company Limited Listing has been verified: 16/10/2013 ) 4 Lane 171, Nguyen An Ninh St., Hoang Mai Dist., Ha Noi Tel: (+84) 4. 36621909 Fax: (+84)4. 36621158 Categories Engineers Civil Company Profile Company name:Duyen Ha Company Limited Legal Representative/CEO: Mr. Pham Van Duyen - Director

Lào Cai có khách sạn quốc tế 4 sao đầu tiên

Swiss-Belhotel International opens 4 - star hotel in Lao Cai (VOV) -The first international 4-star Swiss-Belhotel Lao Cai, under the management of Swiss-Belhotel International, was officially inaugurated on July 11. The hotel was invested by Vietnam Biti’s-a leading footwear production and trading company with a total capitalization of VND 500 billion. Swiss-Belhotel Lao Cai has 186 modern guestrooms and an array of sophisticated facilities including conference rooms, business centre, fitness centre and lobby lounge and bar and upmarket restaurants. Attached to the newly built commercial centre, Swiss-Belhotel Lao Cai is very convenient for those interested in dining, entertainment and shopping. According to Vuu Khai Thanh, General Director of Biti’s, the hotel operation is part of a strategic plan to develop the Kunming - Hanoi- Haiphong Economic Corridor connecting Asean countries by Asian Highway. Swiss-Belhotel International currently manages a portfolio of more than 120 hotels, resorts and projects located in China, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Oman and Saudi Arabia. Awarded Indonesia's Leading Global Hotel Chain for three consecutive years and Most Favourite 4-Star Hotel, Swiss-Belhotel International is one of the world’s fastest-growing international hotel and hospitality management groups. Thứ Sáu, 12/07/2013 Khách sạn 4 sao đầu tiên tại Lào Cai mang tên Swiss-Belhotel Lào Cai do Công ty Trách nhiệm hữu hạn Sản xuất hàng tiêu dùng Bitis đầu tư với số vốn ban đầu trên 500 tỷ đồng và được quản lý bởi Tập đoàn khách sạn Swiss - Belhotel International được khai trương ngày 11/7. Khách sạn Swiss-Belhotel Lào Cai có 186 phòng khách hiện đại trang bị đầy đủ và một loạt các tiện nghi tối tân bao gồm phòng hội nghị, trung tâm thương mại, trung tâm thể dục, sảnh, quầy bar và nhà hàng cao cấp với điểm nhấn là một phòng nghỉ cấp nguyên thủ rộng 700m2. Được gắn liền với các trung tâm thương mại mới được xây dựng, Swiss-Belhotel Lào Cai được kỳ vọng sẽ cung cấp cho khách hàng của mình một nơi thuận tiện để ăn uống, vui chơi giải trí và các địa điểm mua sắm. Ông Vưu Khải Thành, Chủ tịch, Tổng giám đốc Công ty Trách nhiệm hữu hạn Sản xuất hàng tiêu dùng Bitis cho biết, khách sạn sẽ là một điểm nhấn ấn tượng tại thành phố Lào Cai, góp phần vào chiến lược phát triển của tuyến hành lang kinh tế "Côn Minh-Lào Cai-Hà Nội-Hải Phòng" kết nối với các nước ASEAN thông qua đường xuyên Á mà Lào Cai là vị trí quan trọng đối với sự phát triển kinh tế trong khu vực châu Á-Thái Bình Dương. Tập đoàn Swiss-Belhotel International hiện đang quản lý một danh mục hơn 120 khách sạn, khu nghỉ dưỡng và các dự án ở Trung Quốc, Việt Nam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Kuwait, Quatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Oman và Arab Saudi. Được trao giải hàng đầu toàn cầu về chuỗi khách sạn của Indonesia trong ba năm liên tiếp và khách sạn 4 sao được yêu thích nhất, Swiss-Belhotel International là một trong những tập đoàn quản lý khách sạn và ngành khách sạn phát triển nhanh nhất trên thế giới. Swiss - Belhotel Lào Cai là khách sạn thứ hai của tập đoàn này tại Việt Nam, sau khách sạn Swiss-Belhotel Golden Sand Resort & Spa tại Hội An. Theo TTXVN

http://www.bestwestern.com/reservations/hotels/hotels.asp?country=vietnam

http://www.bestwestern.com/reservations/hotels/hotels.asp?country=vietnam

Growing Up Marriott

Growing Up Marriott Inside the family behind one of America’s great businesses: How J. Willard Marriott and his son Bill turned a DC root-beer stand into a worldwide empire. But will any of Bill’s four kids take over the company? By Cindy Rich Comments (0) | Published April 1, 2007 In the lobby of Marriott headquarters in Bethesda, Bill Marriott is on a stage wearing blue jeans and a 1950s-style varsity-letter jacket, telling stories about the old days. Before him stand nearly a thousand employees gathered to celebrate the golden anniversary of the company’s first hotel, near the Pentagon in Arlington. “We had an outside check-in booth,” Bill tells the crowd. When business was good in the summer, he would look into cars pulling in and give rooms to the biggest families: “We got almost $14 for a room with five people.” It’s been 50 years since Bill helped his father, J. Willard Marriott Sr., and mother, Alice, diversify their legendary Hot Shoppes restaurant chain and open that first hotel. Today Bill, at 75, is one of the richest men in America, and Marriott is one of the world’s largest hospitality companies, managing hotels under brands that include the Ritz-Carlton. “Who would have thought on that cold January day in 1957, just before Eisenhower’s inaugural, that we would have almost 3,000 hotels?” he says. “Here’s to 50 more great years.” For some time, many in the industry assumed that Bill’s son and namesake, John Willard Marriott III, 45, would take over for his dad. But when John resigned from his top post in the company in 2005, the business world buzzed with speculation that an outsider would take the reins for the first time. That’s hard to imagine. Marriott is a $12-billion empire built on values passed from one generation to the next. Bill’s three other children are widely liked executives at Marriott. The eldest, Debbie, 49, has an office next to her dad’s. Stephen, 47, though blind and deaf, travels the country to train sales staff. David, the youngest at 33, has on his office wall a white chef’s coat inscribed ceo trainee, a gift from former coworkers. Like Paris Hilton, Bill’s kids grew up as hotel heirs, their family name plastered on buildings. But they are the anti-Hiltons. Raised as Mormons, they were taught to be humble and work hard. As teenagers, they worked scrub jobs at the company as training in the Marriott way. “I don’t look at it like I’m working for a company,” says 36-year employee Ed Rudzinski, general manager of DC’s Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. “I’m really working for a family.” The long line of Marriotts as entrepreneurs starts with J. Willard Marriott Sr., who grew up tending sheep and cattle on his family farm in Marriott, Utah, a small town founded by his grandfather. At 13, he launched a business raising lettuce. The farm work kept him from finishing high school, though he later went to junior college and the University of Utah. Raised by devout Mormons, J. Willard helped out at Sunday school as a young boy. His grandfather, John Marriott, who followed Brigham Young west to Utah in the 1850s, had four wives and at least 30 children, according to Marriott: The J. Willard Marriott Story by Robert O’Brien. At 19, J. Willard did a two-year mission in New England and passed through Washington on his return home. Years later, he took a date to a root-beer stand and found long lines. Remembering DC’s muggy weather, he went to California, tracked down A&W founder Roy Allen, and asked for a license to sell root beer in Washington. J. Willard and his business partner, Hugh Colton, opened a nine-stool, nickel-a-mug A&W stand on DC’s 14th Street on May 20, 1927, the same day Charles Lindbergh started his flight across the Atlantic. The weather was hot. Business boomed. A few weeks later, J. Willard went back to Utah to marry Alice Sheets, his date from that first visit to a root-beer stand. She and J. Willard spent their honeymoon driving back to Washington in his Ford Model T. When winter cut into the demand for their cold root beer, they walked a few blocks to the Mexican Embassy and came back with recipes for tamales and chili, which Alice practiced cooking. The hotter the food, the more people would drink. One day in September they closed the root-beer stand. The next day it opened as the Hot Shoppes. J. Willard and the Perfect Burger As a child, Bill shined his father’s shoes every Saturday so they’d look nice for church on Sunday. If the shoes weren’t perfect, his father told him to do it again. Bill was born in 1932 and named John Willard Jr. His brother, Richard, came along seven years later. They mowed the lawn, washed the cars, and swept the driveway. Their father checked to make sure their rooms were clean. “He was very concerned that he had some money and his children would not learn how to work,” says Bill, who went to St. Albans, the DC boys school next to Washington National Cathedral. His classmates called him “Hot Shoppes.” J. Willard and Alice had become sole owners of Hot Shoppes early on when Colton,who’d graduated from law school, decided the business wouldn’t be able to support two families and sold them his half. They’d also joined a more prominent social circle. In 1930 Alice’s widowed mother, Alice Taylor Sheets, married Reed Smoot, a Republican senator from Utah. J. Willard started playing golf, and he and Alice dined at the White House. A few years later, after Smoot returned to Utah, they moved into the senator’s house on Garfield Street in DC’s Wesley Heights, where Bill and Richard were raised. With jobs at a premium during the Depression, J. Willard hired workers for little more than tips and meals. “He started making big-time money back in 1931,” Bill says. “Everybody was living in apartments. Nobody had air conditioning, so in the summer people didn’t want to cook because it was too hot in their kitchens. They wanted to come to Hot Shoppes and eat in their cars.” The company was the first to open drive-in restaurants; “running boys” brought food to the car. People liked eating outside, Bill says: “The thing that really got the business going was the fact that he was in the right place at the right time with the right product.” Bill tagged along with his parents when they visited Hot Shoppes. His father shook hands with the kitchen workers and called many of them by name—“How are you? How’s your family?” J. Willard visited employees when they were sick and paid their medical bills. “Take care of your employees,” he told Bill, “and they’ll take care of the customers.” Bill saw how his father insisted on order. Cooks had to follow a recipe card for every dish. Hash browns would be turned on the grill only once. Waitresses had to pick up glasses by the sides. Servers couldn’t have mustaches below the corners of the mouth. He listened as his father argued with a manager about how to season a hamburger. “They must have thrown ten hamburgers away,” Bill says. “My father wanted more salt. Eventually he got his point across.” When Bill was 14, his dad put him to work stapling invoices. Soon he was washing dishes and cooking burgers. In his senior year at the University of Utah, where he studied banking and finance, Bill took a class from speech professor Royal Garff, who talked about his daughter, Donna, a freshman. Bill asked a friend to point her out, then engineered a date. Members of the Sigma Chi fraternity were nominating girls for the title of sweetheart of Sigma Chi for an upcoming dance. “I just nominated you for sweetheart,” Bill told Donna. “You have to go with me if you want to be considered.” After the dance, Bill courted Donna for about four months before they began dating exclusively. “It was hard work to get her interested,” he says. “Real hard work.” Upon graduating in 1954, Bill, a member of ROTC, headed to a Navy training school in Georgia. He and Donna spent the next few months writing letters. He knew there was nobody else for him. She was smart and beautiful. She had her feet on the ground. A few months before he began active duty—Bill worked on a Navy ship as a supply officer—he called Donna from Georgia and asked her to marry him. She was shocked it happened so fast. She barely knew anything about his family. “I just need a little bit of time,” she said. “I’d like to run this by my folks.” In June 1955, Bill and Donna were married in Salt Lake City’s Mormon Temple in front of family and friends who belonged to the church. More than 800 guests joined the couple to celebrate that evening. Because Donna’s father didn’t make much money, family friends pitched in with shrimp and a cake with white sugar flowers. Bill’s fraternity brothers serenaded his bride with the “Sweetheart Song,” a Sigma Chi tradition. Battle of Father and Son By the time Bill came back to Washington in 1956, after two years in the Navy, his parents had opened Hot Shoppes from Philadelphia to Richmond. Their catering division was serving airlines. Company stock, first offered in 1953 at $10.25 per share, had sold out in two hours. The company recently had broken ground on its first hotel, the Twin Bridges motor hotel in Arlington near the 14th Street Bridge. The location was a few minutes from National Airport, the Pentagon, and downtown DC. “When they built the first hotel, nobody really knew anything about the hotel business,” Donna says. “Bill went to his dad and said, ‘Why don’t you let me run the hotel, and I’ll learn.’ ” Bill and his parents hung pictures at the hotel until late at night in January 1957, so they could open for President Eisenhower’s second inauguration. Someone called the hotel to see if the family wanted to buy a new Disneyland hotel in California. Bill asked his father. “Heavens, no,” J. Willard said. “We probably won’t be able to make this one work.” Bill led the hotel division and sometimes butted heads with his dad. J. Willard had once told his son, “Nothing good ever happens in a hotel.” He hated the idea of taking on debt—a fear that came from watching his father lose everything in the Depression when he couldn’t repay a loan he’d taken to buy sheep. “I was probably not as sensitive to what he had been through in the Depression,” Bill says. Despite J. Willard’s reluctance, Bill kept pushing. “My dad drove the hotel business,” John says. “We would be a restaurant and food-service company if we were what my grandfather created.” J. Willard demanded perfection from his son. When he visited Bill’s house, he ran his finger along the furniture checking for dust. “Mom went ballistic,” says Bill’s son Stephen. Bill says his mother, Alice, often refereed his battles with J. Willard. Both men trusted her. Tender and loving, she listened to Bill. They traveled to Beverly Hills together to pick out carpets and wall coverings. She helped J. Willard with hiring. She’d later pick the name for Fairfield Inns. “She’d go to his dad when it got really bad and say, “You can’t treat him like this. What are you going to do if he decides he doesn’t want to stay with the company?’ ” Donna says. About once a year, J. Willard praised Bill. “I don’t ever tell you you’re doing a good job because my father never told me I did a good job,” he’d say. “But you are. I’m happy.” In 1964, J. Willard named his son executive vice president, a promotion that meant Bill soon would become president even though he was only turning 32. J. Willard struggled with the decision, according to O’Brien’s biography. The night before the announcement, unable to sleep, he wrote Bill a letter: “A leader should have character, be an example in all things. This is his greatest influence. In this you are admirable. You have not taken advantage of your position as my son. . . .” He attached a list of guiding principles. Among them: “Pray about every difficult problem. Manage your time: Make every minute on the job count. People are number 1—their development, loyalty, interest, team spirit. Develop managers in every area. This is your prime responsibility.” As president, Bill replaced uncles his father had hired with more experienced staff. “His dad wouldn’t do it—he told Bill if he didn’t want them around, he’d have to get rid of them himself,” Donna says. J. Willard, still skeptical of the company’s hotel growth, hounded Bill with questions and second-guessed him. J.Willard agonized over issues; Bill made his decisions quickly. Bill learned some lessons the hard way. Soon after building its first hotel in Atlanta in 1965, Marriott declined to buy a second property nearby—partly because it included an open-air, multistory lobby that a Marriott team saw as wasted space. Bill also didn’t think the company needed two hotels in a city. “Out of our ‘wisdom’ was born the Hyatt Regency of today,” he writes in his autobiography, The Spirit to Serve: Marriott’s Way, coauthored by Kathi Ann Brown. “A steady stream of people passed through the hotel simply to stand in the ‘awesome’ spot in the lobby.” Employees quickly learned that Bill—most called him “Mr. Marriott”—inherited his father’s perfectionism and penny-pinching ways. “There was nothing worse than sitting on an airplane for three hours and having Bill or his dad sitting next to you,” says Jim Durbin, a family friend and former company president. “They’d have your financial statements: ‘How come you had ten peas on the plate with the cordon bleu?’ ” Even today, Bill walks into a hotel and checks for clean carpets and hot soup bowls. If a hotel reports high occupancy rates, he wants higher. He asks managers to learn the business from the bottom up, as he did. When veteran television-news anchor Kathleen Matthews joined the company last fall as a public-affairs executive, she changed bedclothes, cleaned windows, and wiped down a bathroom with a housekeeper. “You’re supposed to clean a room in 20 minutes. Bill says there are 60 steps,” Matthews says. “Within five minutes I was perspiring.” Over the years, Bill developed a reputation for spotting and developing talent. Fred Malek joined the company in 1975. He was leaving the Nixon administration and planning to leave Washington, but Bill persuaded him to stay. Malek spent 14 years with Marriott, including eight as president of the hotel line. Bill impressed him with the way he invited dissent. “He had a good way of not imposing himself in a meeting—of getting everybody to express themselves and getting a dialogue going,” says Malek, who went on to become president of Northwest Airlines and later founded two private-equity firms. “He was easy to argue with because he wasn’t bothered by it. He wanted you to argue with him.” Bill also mentored Al Checchi, who became cochair of Northwest Airlines, and Steve Bollenbach, who now runs Hilton hotels. “It’s significant how many great business leaders Bill Marriott trained,” says former general counsel Sterling Colton, whose father, Hugh, was J. Willard’s business partner in the root-beer stand. “He had a wonderful way of maximizing the abilities of the people he hired.” Bill’s work habits have changed little. Though he recently started a blog, he won’t use a computer and dictates his entries. He hates voice mail; his assistant, Phyllis Hester, types his messages on a typewriter. He carries three-by-five schedule cards in his pocket and bigger cards for taking notes about hotels that he tours. Hester says he’s always checking his watch. When she puts papers in his in-box, he whips through them in an hour. If she doesn’t clear his out-box fast enough, he’ll sometimes put it on her desk. “My mother tried to teach me patience,” Bill once told her. Hester said, “She failed miserably.” Family Time in Kenwood By the time Bill became CEO in 1972, he and Donna had three children. Debbie, their first, was born in 1957 with a congenital heart defect. She cried all the time, but heart-lung machines were relatively new, and doctors wanted to wait to operate. When she was five, Debbie couldn’t walk far without getting out of breath. Bill and Donna brought her to the Mayo Clinic, where they spent the night on their knees praying as she underwent surgery. “The next night, her heart went into fibrillation,” says Donna, who later joined the board of the American Heart Association. Doctors and nurses stayed with Debbie all night and pulled her through. Growing up, Debbie told her dad everything. “Ever since I was a little girl we had this connection,” she says. “He worried about me.” In third grade, she argued with her best friend and wrote the girl a letter calling her bossy. “What do you think of this?” she asked her father. “If I were you, I’d wait a few days, see how it goes, and read it again,” Bill said. Years later he told his daughter he has a drawer of letters he’s written but never sent. Debbie’s brothers Stephen and John arrived soon after she did, a few years apart. The youngest, David, was born in 1973, when Debbie was 16. The family lived in a brick ranch house in Bethesda’s Kenwood neighborhood. Bill made it a point to keep his kids out of the newspapers. When he wasn’t traveling, he was home by 6:30 for dinner. Donna cooked; Debbie made the salads. In the evening, Bill worked in his study but made time to check the kids’ homework. “He’d stop everything and put his pen down and read our papers and edit them for us,” says Debbie, who went to the National Cathedral School for girls. The boys went to St. Albans, Bill’s alma mater. Weekends were sacred to Bill. He took the kids to Annapolis to see boats and to movies, museums, and Civil War battlefields. He and Donna cheered Stephen on during Little League. David remembers Redskins games, NASCAR races with his dad, and especially rides in the Lamborghini that his dad kept in Arizona, where the family vacationed: “I thought it was the coolest thing, like stepping into a spaceship.” Bill was busier when David was young. The company was expanding to Europe, getting into the cruise-ship business, and launching the chain of Great America theme parks (ventures that Marriott later sold). When David’s first-grade teacher asked him to draw a picture of his dad at work and his dad at play, he chose nearly the same image: Bill sitting behind a desk wearing a suit and tie in one picture, a sweater in the other. J. Willard and Alice doted on their grandchildren. Before weekends at the family’s 4,200-acre ranch in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge, they took the kids shopping for cowboy outfits. J. Willard taught Debbie to shoot guns. He let the kids drive his Jeep and took them horseback riding. Debbie and Stephen didn’t like horses, but their grandpa wanted them to ride any­way. “He wanted to make you tough,” John says. “He believed you needed to be beaten up a little to be successful.” The Marriotts spent summers at the family compound on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, as they do today. Each family had its own house. Bill and his brother, Richard, who was running the restaurant division, flew back and forth for business. J. Willard gave the kids chores. When John was eight, his grandpa paid him to pick up pinecones in the woods. “I talked him into paying me a quarter per grocery bag, so I got $1 an hour,” he says. In the mornings, Alice cooked breakfast for the kids, and J. Willard took them on walks in the woods. He told stories about herding sheep as a boy, chasing bears away with his rifle. John laughed at his grandpa’s coyote howl. Bill’s kids didn’t think it was a big deal that their last name was on buildings. They grew up around the business, ate at Hot Shoppes on weekends, and walked through hotels with their dad. “I never said, ‘Wow, look—it’s my name up in lights,’ ” says Debbie, who as a two-year-old cut the ribbon on the family’s second hotel near Key Bridge. Bill and Donna raised the kids to work for what they wanted. “My parents had the philosophy that we only spend money on education and travel,” Debbie says. “We didn’t grow up with fancy cars in a big house.” Donna drove carpool in a station wagon. The kids had allowances. Debbie earned a few dollars a week cleaning her bathroom, washing dishes, and caring for the family’s miniature poodle. John had to pay half the cost of his new bike. “They all got cars when they were 16, and they weren’t Cadillacs,” Bill says. “That was about the only thing we really indulged in—so we didn’t have to drive them around.” When they worked summer jobs with the company, the kids were treated like everyone else. David washed dishes at the Pooks Hill Marriott. Debbie worked at a hotel front desk. Stephen cooked fries at Roy Rogers, which Marriott owned. Bill didn’t pressure his kids to work in the business, Stephen says, but “I know he hoped we’d go into it.” Even as late as college, Debbie wanted to be a doctor; David had childhood dreams of becoming a Redskin. On John’s first day working at one of the Marriott restaurants, he raised a spatula to smash a hamburger, as he’d seen McDonald’s cooks do. “What the hell are you doing?” Bill asked. “The bottom of the spatula never hits the top of the meat.” When Donna accompanied Bill on business trips, she asked J. Willard’s driver to pick up the kids from school. If he arrived in a limousine, Debbie and her brothers wouldn’t get in. “I tried really hard to distance myself from this perception people had that you’re a Marriott so you must be rich,” says Debbie, who wore worn-out jeans when she wasn’t in her school uniform. “I was almost embarrassed by it.” Stephen sometimes put stephen garff—his middle name—on his name tag when he was a hotel manager. Some of John’s friends assumed he’d pay for dinner when they went out. Others wanted free hotel rooms. “When you think somebody’s a really good friend,” John says, “and it turns out they’re not—that’s what’s really hard.” All the kids attended college in Utah, where the family name was well known. The basketball arena at Brigham Young University, which Stephen and Debbie attended, is called the Marriott Center. Classmates asked if they were related to “that building.” “There were a lot of people that used us all our lives, but it taught me to be discerning,” Debbie says. “It was easy to tell. They didn’t want to talk about me. They wanted to talk about my family.” In 1978, when she married Ron Harrison, now Marriott’s president of lodging for Canada, Debbie was anxious to take his last name. She knew the anonymity would help protect her children. Last year Debbie was at a fancy Washington dinner where someone introduced her as “Mr. Marriott’s daughter.” “There was a guy at the end of the table who actually said to me, ‘Now that I know who you are, you’re going to be really interesting to talk to,’ ” she says. “How Do You Work for that Mormon Guy?” Inside a small room in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Potomac, Bill sits on a folding chair, his wife next to him, and takes his scripture book out of its worn brown-leather case. The writing on the chalkboard reads lesson 3—grace for grace (for unto you . . . a savior is born). About 25 people are gathered here on a January morning for Sunday school. Bill’s son Stephen sits in front, closest to the teacher, because of his hearing problem. The ward members—a ward is similar to a parish—watch a video about the birth of Jesus. Down the hall, Ron is teaching a group of church teens; later Debbie will work with the young women’s group. Church is a pillar of Bill’s life. His parents took him to services in the Commerce Department auditorium when he was three months old. As he raised his children, he wanted them to hear the messages he’d heard growing up: Be modest. Be humble. Work hard. In the mid-1970s, soon after David was born, the church called on Bill to serve as bishop for two years. Clergy in the Mormon church are volunteers. Bill put in 70 hours a week at work and 25 more as bishop. He counseled married couples and helped people find work, sometimes in his hotels. He talked with teenagers about church proscriptions on drinking, smoking, and premarital sex. He visited church members who were sick and planned funerals. One day, as he watched worshipers file into the room, he told Donna that he knew the burdens each of them carried. “I think it made me a lot more compassionate,” Bill says. Years ago Bill and his dad decided to put a Book of Mormon in hotel rooms along with the Bible. “I’ve had a lot of people tell me they read it and have become members of our church,” he says. The book is one of the few signs that a Mormon runs Marriott. Bill and Donna don’t serve alcohol at their holiday party. At banquets, servers remove the couple’s wine glasses and coffee cups. “People would say, ‘How do you work for that Mormon guy?’ ” says Bud Ward, a former senior vice president and the industry’s first African-American hotel executive. “Bill’s a Mormon; I’m an Episcopalian. He’s a Republican; I’m a Democrat. And you know what? We never talked religion, and we never talked politics.” The Mormon church calls men at 19 to devote two years to mission work. Stephen went to Canada, John to Japan. But David wasn’t sure he wanted to go. Most of his friends weren’t Mormon, and his high-school life wasn’t centered on the church. He went to parties and listened to the Grateful Dead. He’d taken his parents’ car out before he got his license. Some called him a wild child. “The fact that I come from a very conservative Mormon family—some people may have perceived that just because I behaved like a normal child, I was some wild child,” David says. “I get a chuckle out of hearing people say that. “When you’re that age, your friends are your life. Mormons aren’t perfect. We’ve all had our breakdowns.” Bill at times got angry at David and raised his voice, a rarity, Donna says; “I thought Bill was going to kill him.” Considering whether to go on a mission, David prayed and sought advice from his brothers. “I decided I better take this opportunity to figure out if this is really what I believe and what I want my values to stem from,” he says. He spent two years in Manchester and Liverpool, England. He woke up at 6:30 to study scripture. He could listen only to classical or church music. He went door to door to spread the message of the church. Some people accused him of being in a cult. Some thought Mormons stole women for their harems and smuggled them to Salt Lake City through a tunnel. When people slammed the door in David’s face, he knocked again. “It was the first time in my life I was really looking outward,” David says. “It answered a lot of questions for me.” Bill says the mission changed his son’s life: “He came back ready to go to work, settle down, and have a family.” A Tragedy and a Miracle One afternoon in August 1985, the family had a cookout at its compound in New Hampshire. The sun was sparkling off the water. Bill, Donna, and all the kids except Stephen were there, along with Richard and his wife and four daughters. J. Willard was in his favorite place with his favorite people. The menu included summer corn, which he loved. At some point in the meal, he went inside, saying, “I’ll be back in a minute.” When he didn’t come back, Alice went to check on him. Bill followed. Debbie, then 28, looked through the window and saw her grandpa lying in his big reclining chair in the living room. Her aunt Nancy, Richard’s wife, was doing CPR. Debbie and Ron took turns trying to revive him. He was gagging, which made it seem as if he were breathing. The family waited for the paramedics for 20 minutes before Bill got in his car to look for them. J. Willard died as Debbie and Ron worked on him. The heart attack was at least his sixth. He was 84. More than 2,500 people gathered for the funeral next to the Mormon Temple by the Beltway in Kensington. At the service, President Nixon called J. Willard “one of the most successful businessmen of this century.” Roy Rogers, Strom Thurmond, and Billy Graham attended. Close friend George Romney—whose son, 2008 presidential candidate Willard Mitt Romney, is named for J. Willard—dedicated the grave. Bill read from his father’s favorite poem, “Trees,” which is inscribed on a piece of wood outside his office door: The tree that never had to fightFor sun and sky and air and light,But stood out in the open plainAnd always had its share of rain,Never became a forest kingBut lived and died a scrubby thing. . . .Good timber does not grow in ease: The stronger the wind, the tougher the trees. Days after his father’s funeral, Bill and his family returned to New Hampshire and tried to get back to normal, comforted by their belief that Mormons live an eternal life and they’d see J. Willard again. When friends came to visit, Bill said he’d take them for a boat ride, one of his favorite pastimes. He asked Debbie, Ron, and their boys to go along. Bill went to the dock a few minutes early to gas up the boat. It was a humid day, and the air wasn’t moving, so gas fumes gathered around him. When he turned the ignition key to check the fuel gauge, a spark from the starter ignited the fumes. The explosion was so loud that the windows in Debbie’s house shook. She heard screaming and ran. The flames from the boat leaped 60 feet into the air. She saw her dad walking out of the water; he had jumped into the lake. The skin on his hands was peeling off. He had burns on his face and legs. That Bill walked away from the accident was a miracle, Debbie says: “The doctor said the blast should have knocked him out. He would have burned to death.” David was almost 12. That day was the first time he saw fear in his father’s eyes. Bill spent nearly a month in the hospital. Doctors grafted skin on his hands and legs. After the accident, he worked fewer hours, ate better, and exercised. “He stopped and smelled the roses,” Donna says. That didn’t last long. Bill had trouble sitting still. He worried. In 1989, he had three heart attacks, followed by coronary bypass surgery, which sidelined him for about six months. But he was soon back on the job working at full throttle. Today, though he’s well past retirement age and worth $1.7 billion, Bill still brings home at least one briefcase on weekends. He spends a third of his time traveling. Four hours in Toronto for a groundbreaking, a shareholders meeting in Spain. “He’d go through a city’s worth of hotels in one day if you let him,” Donna says. At budget time, Donna tiptoes by his study. “Sometimes you wonder if it’s too much,” Bill says. “But it’s good. It’s good for you.” Ed Rudzinski, general manager at Marriott Wardman Park, says Bill visits at least ten times a year. One time, he rolled down his car window, stuck his head out, and yelled, “I’mmmmm here.” The night of the hotel’s Black Tie & Boots presidential inaugural party in 2001, Rudzinski’s phone rang around 11. “Is that party still going on over there?” Bill asked. “I want to come by and see it—and bring my family.” Rudzinski surveyed the scene. There were 12,000 guests, including President George W. Bush. Hotel staff had set up 75 bars. Beer bottles were everywhere. We need to get things in order, Rudzinski thought. No, he decided, let Mr. Marriott see what we’re dealing with. Bill and Donna arrived with John and David and their wives. They stood at the top of the stairs, above one of the ballrooms. He took Rudzinski by the arm: “How many people you got in there?” “Probably 5,000 in that room,” he said. Bill looked at Donna proudly: “Five thousand people in there.” He took his wife and sons from room to room. “Will you look at this?” he said. “This is what we do.” Outside work, Bill and Donna lead lives that hint at their wealth without flaunting it. In 1991 they moved from Kenwood to the Avenel golf community in Bethesda. Their Georgian-style brick house, which was custom-built, is worth $6 million and has a solarium and a movie theater. One of Bill’s indulgences is his collection of 30 vintage cars, which he keeps in garages next to the house. The walls are adorned with ribbons Bill has won at auto shows. Hester says the only time she sees her boss nervous is when his cars are being judged—“because that’s something he has no control over.” Bill has taken the family on exotic trips to Kenya and Turkey. But he doesn’t own a yacht or a private jet. “The family wants to maintain a major stock share in this company,” says Bill, who shines his own shoes. “I can’t go out and sell my stock. I have all I ever need—so why worry about it?” On his frequent date nights with Donna, Bill wears his Levis and drives his Mercedes; Donna has a bad back so she can’t get into most of his sports cars. They listen to big-band music. Sometimes they eat in Marriott hotel restaurants, but they also like fast food. Marriott employees spotted the two recently at a McDonald’s on a Saturday night. “What are you doing here?” one asked. “This is where we eat,” Bill said. They like going to movies at Tysons Corner Center. John says his dad was happy when he started getting the senior-citizen discount. “Bill likes shoot-’em-ups like Clint Eastwood and Denzel Washington,” Donna says. “We go to those for a while, and then I say it’s time for me to see a chick flick.” The kids are a big part of their lives. John, Debbie, and Stephen live within five minutes of their parents and go to church with them. Bill takes his cars out with John, who has 15 of his own. David, who lives in DC, is building a house nearby. On Christmas morning, Bill and Donna load up their minivan and bring presents to their kids and grandkids. When the family gets together, conversation inevitably turns to the company: “Have you seen the redo of the JW Marriott downtown?” That’s how it’s always been for Bill—family and business blur. Every winter, he and Donna spend three weeks at the Harbor Beach Marriott Resort & Spa in Fort Lauderdale. They sit in the sun and read. Donna does needlepoint. After about a week, Bill gets antsy and starts touring hotels. Once he got up at 4 in the morning to meet a night crew. “He can never retire,” Donna says. “I’ve told him that. I’ve said, ‘You’d just die. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself.’ ” Who’s the Next Bill? For years, it was assumed that if any of Bill’s children took over when he stepped down, it would be John. In 2003, at age 42, John became president of North American lodging. He was also in charge of global brand management and sales. Business Travel News had called him one of the “most influential executives” in the hotel industry. During his years as a company executive—early on he was running banquets—he’d learned his dad’s tricks. John would walk into a hotel room and take his shoes off. If his socks got wet, he knew the staff had cleaned the carpet to prep for his visit. He and Bill didn’t always see eye to eye. When an advertising agency pitched an ad showing a man wearing sandals, Bill said, “Get rid of the sandals—that’s not our customer.” “Actually, that is one of our customers,” John said. “They’re trying to go after the next generation.” John, like his brothers, was used to being under a microscope as the boss’s son. “People make it very clear that they expect the worst of you, so you have to prove them wrong,” he says. “They expect you not to work very hard. They expect you to go tell your father everything.” But in recent years, John had frustrations with his role as son and executive. “If the chairman and CEO is your father and you’re a senior executive—but not reporting to your father—then the people who do report to him tell him what they want to tell him about you,” he says. “If they’re interested in his job, and they see that I’m kind of making my way up the ladder, then they see me as a threat,” he says. “It’s a tough position to be in.” He also realized he wanted to be more entrepreneurial—something that isn’t always easy inside a big company. He and his team had developed a strategy of using customer profiles to personalize hotel stays. It was his idea to give guests their airline boarding passes at checkout. “I’m more like my grandfather,” John says. “I’m on the creative side.” John talked with his father and thought about his next move for a long time. He’d founded the family’s private partnership, JWM Family Enterprises, which owns and develops hotels. He decided he’d focus on expanding JWM, a job that would leave him time to work on start-ups. He is particularly interested in a small medical company. “There are different business opportunities where you can make money but it doesn’t necessarily help anyone,” says John, who serves as vice chair of Marriott’s board. “A lot’s been given to me. I need to give back.” Before his public announcement in fall 2005, John told his father he was resigning. “I was disappointed,” Bill says. “He worked in the business almost his entire life.” Though there had been talk that John wasn’t comfortable enough in the spotlight to be the public face of the company, the move surprised some employees. “For John to step aside was quite a shock,” Ed Rudzinski says. One morning in December, Stephen is getting ready to speak to a ballroom of Marriott employees during the company’s Sales School at the Westfields in Chantilly. He stands to the side of the stage, waiting for his introduction. Dark sunglasses cover his eyes. “Two steps,” a colleague tells him, then someone leads him to the podium, which he grips with both hands. “Welcome, everybody,” says Stephen, executive vice president of company culture. “Isn’t this a great hotel?” Stephen’s health problems make him an unlikely choice to replace his father as CEO. They started with hearing loss when he was in ninth grade. His parents thought he wasn’t paying attention at dinner. “Can’t you hear me?” Bill would ask. Doctors couldn’t determine the cause. He wore hearing aids, which made him feel awkward. “Some people have to wear glasses—do you think they’re geeks?” Bill told him. “It’s the same thing.” Toward the end of his Mormon mission, Stephen had trouble driving at night. By the time he finished graduate school, he couldn’t see the chalkboard. It wasn’t until several years later that doctors figured out what was wrong. He’d started to stutter. His hands jerked. A muscle biopsy showed that he has MERRF syndrome, a rare disorder that damages mitochondria—the energy source for cells—and affects the brain and muscles. There is no cure for MERRF syndrome. “My dad likes to fix things fast,” Stephen says. “I think he got a little frustrated because he wanted to fix my eyes and my ears, and he didn’t know how to do it. None of us know how to do it yet.” About three years ago, Stephen lost his sight completely. He sometimes can get a sense of what people look like from their handshakes. He can’t read Braille because his hands shake too much. He uses a voice-activated computer program to scan documents and type e-mails. His assistant, Judy Goulden, reads him his mail. He memorizes his speeches. “Steve can listen to things, and two weeks later he’ll recite it word by word to an audience,” Goulden says. “It’s a gift.” Using his cane, Stephen can find his way from his sixth-floor office to the lower-level gym for workouts. “If he’s in the hallway facing the wrong way, people will say, ‘Hi, Mr. Marriott—let me help you,’ ” Goulden says. He was walking through a hotel lobby once holding onto a friend’s arm when the friend stopped to pick up litter. Stephen, recognizing what he calls “the Marriott bend,” later phoned the general manager to say there was trash in the hotel. Thanks to his hearing aids, he can pick up loud sounds and talk on the phone. During meetings, he sits at the middle of the table and asks colleagues to speak up. He listens to football games on the radio. His son, Blake, a senior at Bethesda’s Walt Whitman High School, cooks for Stephen when his wife, Julie, is away. He plays golf: Friends line him up, and he swings. “What frustrates me is when people put limitations on me,” Stephen says. He once reminded his father that a blind man climbed Mount Everest. Stephen drops by Bill’s office often. They have lunch every few weeks. Bill hugs him at work, as he does all the kids. Unlike his father, Bill’s generous with his praise and affection. “I’m proud of you, Stephen,” he says, “and I love you.” Bill calls Stephen his hero. “He’s got more courage than anybody I’ve ever seen,” Bill says. “I’ve never heard him complain. Every now and then he’ll say, ‘I wish I could see what my daughter looks like when she gets married.’ Those things really grab you.” Debbie only recently stepped into a big role at the company. Last fall Bill offered his daughter the job as Marriott’s vice president of government affairs. Debbie hadn’t worked in the business since she was 21 and clerking at a hotel front desk. After she married Ron, her days were filled with raising their five children­, volunteering on boards, and running a church youth group. She became a mental-health advocate after her twin boys, now 27, were diagnosed with bipolar disorder. “Sometimes you see a person and say, ‘They have everything going for them—the perfect life,’ ” Ron says. “Everybody has issues. Everybody gets scratched.” Her dad’s offer came at the right time. Ron travels four days a week. Four kids are off on their own. The youngest, Kim, is a junior in high school. Soon the couple will have an empty nest. “I told him years ago, ‘You need to have Debbie work here,’ ” says Bill’s assistant, Phyllis Hester. “I thought Debbie was a lot like his mother—very smart.” Bill’s mother, Alice, who died in 2000 at 92, had served on Marriott’s board of directors. She was treasurer for three Republican conventions and vice chair of Nixon’s inaugural committee. “My grandma did things before women were doing things,” Debbie says. Debbie likes that the job combines her interests in politics, Washington, and the company. She also enjoys helping to keep the family values at the core of the company. “A lot of people think it’s about the prestige or the power or the money—but it’s not,” Debbie says. “In our family, it’s more of a stewardship.” She and Bill have stayed close through the years. When Debbie battled thyroid cancer three years ago, Bill and Donna flew to the Mayo Clinic for her surgery. “He called the doctors and made sure I was getting the best treatment,” Debbie says. “Still being mom and dad.” Bill stops by her office every day. They’ll chat about her kids but also work. “I feel a little pressure,” Debbie says. “I don’t want to disappoint him.” If her light is off, Bill will ask his assistant, “Where’s my darling daughter?” It’s a Tuesday before Christmas, and Bill is touring the Renaissance Washington, part of his annual holiday hotel visits with staff. He’s brought David along. Employees gather in the lobby to meet their CEO, cheering when he arrives. Bill walks around saying hello and posing for photographs, his son behind him. “Here comes David,” Bill says. David shakes hands with dishwashers, cooks, housekeepers, and sales associates—people doing jobs he’d once done. “Happy holidays,” he says. “It’s nice to see you.” He’s watched his dad greet employees for years. At 33, David leads a global sales team that handles Marriott’s largest business relationships. He oversees reservation centers and sales offices around the world. He reports to an executive vice president, not his father. “I don’t go to my father if I have issues or challenges,” he says. “Obviously I have a one-way line to the chairman—I don’t want to take advantage of that.” Colleagues ask David whether he’s a candidate for CEO. “I’ve never been one to get ahead of myself,” he says. “Things will work out for the best—whether that means a Marriott is taking over the company one day or a Marriott isn’t. The thing we want to ensure is that we get the right person for the job.” The day after the hotel tour with David, Bill sits on the couch in his office and talks about the future. Should something happen to him, there’s a succession plan. But he says he’s not going anywhere. “A lot of people retire too early and end up very frustrated,” he says. “You’ve been on a fast cycle all your life, and all the sudden the cycle stops.” Bill smiles when he hears that colleagues have mentioned Debbie as his possible successor. She’s very good, he says, but she doesn’t have business experience. What about David? “There’s a lot he needs to learn through the years—but we’ve got time,” Bill says. “We’ll see how it goes. You just never know.” Meanwhile, as the company prepares to celebrate its 80th anniversary in May, the family’s next generation is coming of age in true Marriott fashion. Debbie’s daughter spent a summer pumping gas at a boatyard near the family’s New Hampshire compound. John’s daughter Nicole, 18, has worked bagging groceries. Debbie’s son Chris Harrison graduates from Brigham Young this spring and hopes to get his MBA. He voluntered with a friend last summer at an orphanage in India. He wants a job where he’s working with people. He likes making deals. Two years ago, Chris’s dad, Ron, approached Ed Rudzinski at Marriott Wardman Park about a summer internship for Chris. He told Rudzinski the family didn’t want anyone finding out Chris was a Marriott. Rudzinski wasn’t sure what to do with Chris that summer. He was the first of Mr. Marriott’s grandchildren to get involved in the business. When Bill came by the hotel one day, Rudzinski said, “I understand your grandson’s going to be training here.” “Where are you going to put him?” Bill asked. Rudzinski suggested the front desk or events planning. Bill said, “Put him in the kitchen.” Staff writer Cindy Rich teamed up with television’s Arch Campbell in the March issue to write about his battle with cancer. Categories:People & Politics