Minor Hotels, the group behind Anantara and Avani, has spent more than twenty years in Vietnam building resorts in leisure spots like Hoi An, Mui Ne and Quy Nhon. Now it's heading inland. The first step: a 310-room Avani+ Hanoi, announced in September and slated to open in 2028 inside Hinode City, a large mixed-use complex that will pair the hotel with a lifestyle mall and 1,099 residential and serviced apartments.
The logic is straightforward. Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have turned into genuine commercial and cultural hubs, flights between them and the rest of Asia keep improving, and Vietnamese themselves are travelling in record numbers. The country logged 137 million domestic tourist trips in 2025 — up roughly 25% from 110 million the year before, according to the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism. That's a domestic market most international chains have largely ignored in favour of beach bookings.
Minor's chief development and luxury officer Omar Romero told Skift the city hotels will chase a different mix of guests: corporate travellers, meetings, short leisure breaks and long-stay residents. International demand is expected from South Korea and China primarily, plus Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe and Australia — but Vietnamese guests are flagged as a very important slice of the business too.
What's interesting for hotel watchers is the supply side. According to Savills, Vietnam's new hotel pipeline is still heavily coastal, with Da Nang and Phu Quoc dominating the three-year outlook, while city inventory grows much more slowly. Minor is clearly betting that gap is an opening, and Romero says the group is actively hunting more urban sites, with Ho Chi Minh City at the top of the wishlist — though no specific project has been named yet.
For travellers, the practical takeaway is that Hanoi's hotel scene is about to get another solid mid-to-upscale international option in a self-contained development — handy if you want mall, dining and apartment-style accommodation in one place. It also signals where the smart money in Vietnamese hospitality is going: less sun-lounger, more skyline.
