Top job for local hotelier in Vietnam

Sri Lankan hotelier Roshan Fernando has been appointed group general manager of Vina Properties Hotels and Resorts, Dalat, in Vietnam.

Roshan Fernando

Fernando's appointment, coincides with the purchase by the Vietnamese company Vina Properties Development of the Sofitel Dalat Palace Hotel (A five star Boutique hotel), the Mercure Dalat du Parc Hotel( 150 rooms, 4 Star) and the Dalat Palace Golf Course ( 18 holes), which were owned by the United States-based Danao International Holdings Limited.

The two hotels in Dalat are part of a remarkable string of French and modern imperial buildings on pine-clad hills that complement the architecture in way that is undoubtedly romantic, as the tourist brochures say. Dalat is now a city and one of Vietnam's major destinations for local and overseas tourists.

Fernando was director of operations of Aitken Spence Hotels in Sri Lanka before he was appointed to Vietnam for the first time in 2007 and Singapore in 2008/2009.

In Singapore he was general manager of the luxury, five-star Amara Sanctuary Resort, Sentosa, which position he held when appointed to Vietnam for the second time, in 2010.

The experience implied in a 30-year career in hoteliery in South and Southeast Asia with the depth and breadth of Fernando's will be significant where the challenge is to demonstrate the full value of priceless early-20th-century buildings to today's economic development.

Beyond Dalat, Fernando is in charge of the other two hotels owned by Vina Properties Development, the Ramana Saigon (290 rooms, 4 star) between Ho Chi Minh City's international airport, Tan Son Nhat, and what is called 'downtown' Saigon, and the Hotel Royal (75 rooms), in Vung Tau, a seaside-resort city not far from HCMC.