Today is day #2 in Vietnam.
I started my day by joining my Vietnam roommate, Chris McCay, on an early run to the nearest Highlands Coffee shop for a pre-breakfast pastry. I ordered a plain croissant, and after 15 minutes of waiting, I had my delicious croissant. We then headed to UEF to have 2 lectures, one lecture about Smart & Sustainable Service and another about Vietnamese. We created pitches on US industries that we thought should be implemented in Vietnam, and my group did our pitch on Pickleball. Turns out, pickleball is also massively growing in Vietnam, so we did not get a prize of quality for our pitch. After that, we ate some very delicious food, then went to our first Vietnamese site visit at the Park Hyatt Saigon Hotel.
The Park Hyatt Saigon is a beautiful establishment. What resonated with me the most during the site visit was the hotel’s pride in its minimalism. I think hotels like the Park Hyatt brand attract more luxury customers due to their higher prices and promotion of peaceful, quiet luxury. They offer to all guests limousine service, butler service, Michelin-recognized restaurants, and all the luxury amenities one could imagine. We toured a standard room and found it to be very impressive, especially the bathroom. They are in a similar price range to standard luxury hotels in the United States, but come with more, another example of how the USD goes a long way in a growing nation like Vietnam. The Park Hyatt brand of Hyatt hotels is interesting; they have a focus on food, art, and wine… and this hotel had plenty of all 3. Not only did the hotel have 2 amazing restaurants, but it also had its own in-house chocolatier. They had art installations on every wall, and they have the largest wine collection in all of Vietnam! Along with the wine collection, they have one of the 4 highest rated sommeliers. In terms of sustainability, I was given the impression that sustainability is less important in the nation than I initially thought. A group of us were given the impression that large corporations in Vietnam, like the Hyatt we visited, only have environmental goals simply because their HQ in the States demands them to. When a fellow student asked the Hyatt representative about sustainability practices, we received an answer that furthered this sentiment. Along with that, in our first lecture at UEF today, our lecturer told us that companies only switch to better sustainability practices to cut costs or because the HQ of the company said to do so. But perhaps this was simply a bad example. We then returned to the hotel for a while, and I lost my wallet in the hotel lobby. Luckily, the hotel worker left it at the front desk, and I was able to retrieve it once the front desk notified me. We ended our night by meeting some of the UEF students at a street food market in a less touristy area of town, and then finished off by doing karaoke. As always, my go-to (and ONLY) karaoke song is “Tequila” by The Champs. Can’t really mess up those lyrics! All in all, this was a Great day and furthered my sentiment of wanting to return in the future.
