Small-expensive hotels in Hanoi’s old quarter put on sale A lot of 2-3 mini hotels in the ancient town of Hanoi, the commercial hub which is called the “golden land area” thanks to the high profitability, have been offered for sale.    A small ad offering for sale a hotel in Hanoi's old quarter.  The common characteristics of the hotels are that they are located on advantageous positions – the street facing hotels in the ancient quarter of Hanoi, the top priority destination in foreign travelers’ itinerary in travel firms’ designed tours. This is the area which gathers a lot of mini private run hotels which mostly serve small groups of foreign travelers. Meanwhile, domestic travelers would rather stay in the hotels a bit further from the central area, while foreign businessmen prefer the bigger 5-star hotels, including the ones in the suburbs. The hotels here have been compared as the “goose that lay golden eggs,” while providing accommodation services to foreign travelers has been the main source of income of the majority of the Vietnamese people in the ancient quarter. Especially, all the hotels being offered for sale have been prosperous in their business, while each of them is worth no less than hundreds of billions of dong. A hotel located on the Hang Dau Street in Hoan Kiem district, near the Guom Lake (Sword Lake), is now on sale for VND140 billion. The hotel covering a land area of 350 square meters has been advertised as having 10 floors with 80 rooms The broker has declined to give further information about the hotel, including the address. “The hotel has been operating well as usual. Meanwhile, the news about the sale may badly affect its operation,” he explained. “If you can show your real interest in the property, I will arrange a meeting with the hotel’s owner for further discussion,” the broker said, adding that it would be time consuming to meet all the clients, because the valuable property would be not affordable to everyone. He also revealed that the owner now needs money indeed; therefore, clients would be able to haggle about the prices. “If he was not so thirsty for money, he would not have to sell the hotel, which is the goose that lays golden eggs,” the borker said. Another hotel, on Hang Bo street, 7-storey, covering an area of 350 square meters, have also been put on sale at VND400 million per square meter. Hoa, the broker of the hotel, said this is a 3-star hotel with 50 rooms, which has been performing well with stable large custom. Hoa is also the broker of another hotel, a little bit smaller, with 20 rooms. The hotel covers an area of 130 square meters, 7-storey and the owner wants VND30 billion for it. The ad pieces on the sale of the hotels on Hang Bo, Tho Xuong, Hang Dau with tens or hundreds of rooms have been easily found on the websites or real estate forums. Some 4-star hotels and the small ones with some 10 rooms in Cau Giay and Ba Dinh districts have also been put on sale. Phan Xuan Can, Managing Director of Soho, a real estate trading floor specializing in arranging hotel deals, said the firm has successfully arranged a deal after five months of negotiations, while it is considering the other five cases. Of these, two have been operational, while the other three remain on paper. Can has noted that most of the hotels’ owners now have financial problems and they have to sell the assets to pay debts. VNE