23 minute read
after Covid
lot of lantern fabrication in the area so they display a lot of that at night and it becomes very idyllic,” suggests the Finnish-Swede.
He describes Danang as a bit calmer than a big city.
“There’s a bit less shopping etc. but on the other hand it’s quite calming, in the sense that it’s not as hectic as a big city. People come here for leisure so they’re a little bit more relaxed. In more business-oriented hotels people are more in a hurry, whereas here they come to wind down and enjoy. And that’s the kind of environment that we’re trying to create for the guests and of course that reflects on you as well.”
With that Tommy means that the staff is influenced by the slightly more leisurely atmosphere among the guests, even though they of course still work long days and are busy.
“Hyatt Regency Danang Resort is a beach resort where we want people to enjoy the good food and beverages, our spa and hopefully also good weather, so they might also come back another time. We have a lot of returning guests coming here annually, some even several times per year.”
The resort is a bit outside Danang proper, which does have a downtown, but which is still relatively dominated by low-rise buildings. Among the waterfront highrise hotels are lining up, though Hyatt, situated further southeast is a low-rise property.
To define the Regency among the different Hyatt brands Tommy says that it consists in many resorts but also city hotels around the world.
“Its characteristics are more towards a familyoriented hotel rather than a typical business hotel where Grand Hyatt is more business hotels and our Park Hyatt hotels are more boutique style; with butler service etc. Any ranges of our brands, depending on the location where they are, also typically cater for that segment of business where you are located.”
A lot of construction is visibly also going on and Tommy confirms that there are a lot more hotels coming up, with hopes of course also for more tourist arrivals. If one wants to visit when it is less crowded, high season, that starts end of May and ends towards early October, as well as Tết (the Vietnamese New Year), should be avoided.
More shopping centres are anticipated but what people shop mostly in Daning is locally produced clothing and accessories, such as straw handbags.
Regency Club, the hotel’s club lounge, boasts an enormous marble slab which functions as a table for the breakfast spread and canapés served to guests in the evening.
Tommy introduces the remaining outlets in the fivestar resort. Greenhouse, the-all-day-dining whose main fare is Mediterranean cuisine, is also decked out with marble. “We do our own home made pastas, pizzas and so forth; comfort food. That’s our western food offer.”
Pool House sits next to the Non Nuoc Beach. “Here we serve authentic local dishes and western comfort food paired with some delicious desserts, so you have your typical noodle dishes, and some stir-fried items that are popular throughout this region. The dish Cao lầu is prepared with hand-crafted smoked Noodles from our neighbouring town, Hoi An. It’s served with roasted pork belly, local fresh herbs, rice crackers, at the bottom of the bowl there is a soy-based, sweet pork broth sauce with local spices. The smoked noodles are a traditional noodle only found in Hoi An and its only prepared by two families today.”
“At Pool House, we have a weekly local market evening, serving more street food-like dishes offered at different stations. So, you can have the experience of local food here at the resort,” continues Tommy.
“Beach House is our evening dining restaurant, where we focus on Vietnamese cuisine, mainly seafood, a little bit refined but with an authentic taste. We serve steaks as well as to satisfy all guests’ tastes. On Fridays we offer a barbeque dinner there. Each restaurant has a buffet theme night actually.”
As part of the hotel there are also residences so the European-style eatery Baguette functions both as convenience store and café.
“Baguette is a great stop for Vietnamese coffee and it stocks traditional Vietnamese grocery products and hard-to-find Western items for expats and tourists so they can cook their own meals.”
Being in charge for the whole F&B operation Tommy describes his job as follows: “My role is to help and support teams. Sometimes it is more about administration than being in the operations but sometimes it’s the opposite. You provide five-star service to guests by working with the team, being on the floor etc.; helping and ensuring that the guest get everything that they expect to experience when they are visiting us.”
This means that Scandinavian visitors can most definitely get to see this outgoing Nordic chef and have a chat with him too.
When asked to compare Vietnamese cuisine with Malaysian cuisine Tommy responds: “The cuisine is in general quite light and not very heavy, in comparison to Malaysian food where they use a lot of coconut milk, coconut cream etc and heavy curries. Here they use lots of vegetables, salads and herbs in their dishes. Usually when you eat street food you can enjoy many things as the portions are quite small. You don’t overwhelm yourselves. And as in many countries in Asia at lot of the food is made
for sharing, which is a great way of enjoying a meal, and try even more dishes,” he adds.
The vegetables are to a large extent organic and sourced locally, Tommy highlights. “We work with many local farmers. The majority of our fruits and vegetables are organic – we actually try to work towards a 100 percent target of organic produce and we’re nearly there.” Among the organic farmers that can supply all year around is one run by nuns: “They have an organic farm tied to their school, so since the opening of the hotel, we’ve been buying their produce. Now they’ve been able to grow their production so there are other hotels that are buying their produce as well. But I believe we were the first hotel customer. We have helped and guided them on what kind of herbs and vegetables we would like.”
Da Nang
emerging Vietnamese resort and business destination
Text and photos by Joakim Persson
Da Nang is a trending and growing seaside city in central Vietnam, with sandy beaches, a wide selection of hotel choices – including many international five-star brands- and with the popular Hoi An Ancient Town in its vicinity. One can fly there from many of Asia’s other main destinations.
Da Nang’s development (a commercial port since in the early 18th century) is also supported by a master plan with a vision to 2030, under which the central city will become one of the major socio-economic hubs in Vietnam. Under the revised plan, the city has set a target of becoming a centre for start-ups, innovation, tourism, trade, finance, logistics, and information technology etc. Tourism development will be paired with environmentally-friendly industrial projects and eco-industrial zones, is the aim.
An impression one easily gets of Da Nang is that it is very spread out and with many empty plots of land waiting to be developed. Along the beachfront hotels are however lining up for many kilometers, while there are also many seafood restaurants right by the beach. One handy transportation service to get around is the many Grab motorcycle taxis. The city also has a patchy bus network that is not used by many, and very affordable, if one can learn its routes.
For excursions these are some highlights: My Son Holy Land, one of five UNESCO World Heritage sites in Vietnam, 70 km fr Danang; Hoi An Ancient Town; and the Marble Mountains.
Among the many hotels, we have experienced two of the beachfront five-star resorts.
Pullman Danang Beach Resort It is easy give a strong nod of approval for the resort’s hallmarks: distinctive cuisine and creative beverage concepts, as well as its excellent Nang Spa.
A crew of female bartenders at the lobby-based Infinity Bar (with two evening Happy Hour periods) hosts cocktail classes as well as mixes excellent ‘Collection’
concoctions and other drinks from an eclectic list. This al fresco venue overlooks the resort’s expansive garden with pond and pool as well as the sea beyond.
Nearby the pool (large, blue with white underwater spotlights at night), Azure Beach Lounge seafood restaurant sits directly on the soft white sands of Danang’s shores, offering both indoor and outdoor dining in a Mediterranean atmosphere, with seasonal BBQ buffets.
Pan-seared scallops and grilled mushroom, green bean puree, pumpkin puree and herb salad is an example of one of the sumptuous dishes there, perfectly paired with wine by the glass: Woolshed Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay.
Next to Azure is the spa, which reveals a truly calming setting. The signature treatment: Harmony of Energy Massage (inspired by ancient massage rituals and combining 7 massage techniques) is recommended as truly different!
Accommodation comes with backlit bathroom marble counters, tubs with glass window, and overall beige and white colours accented by dark brown timber floors and furniture. Choices include cottages, rooms and suites, where the penthouse type boasts vast terraces with sea view.
Finally, the choices from the International buffet on Saturdays at Epice is not to be taken lightly. Steamed seabass with soy sauce, Potato gratin, Grilled oyster, Spanish Omelette, Paella, an array of desserts etc. form an awesome and really delicious buffet selection, also with option for free flow wine and beer.
Hyatt Regency Danang Resort & Spa Some three kilometres southeast down the road the Hyatt brand’s Da Nang property, including Residences, sits on a sprawling piece of beachfront land, where guests can directly step on to the powder white sandy and long stretch of beach.
The resort boasts several pool zones, with the main pool featuring a water slide, while adults also have a pool for themselves - as do the Regency Club guests.
The guestrooms and suites, two-bedroom residences as well as three-bedroom villas come with white and creamy-white hues (such as the tub) and sandy veined marble twin sinks, bathroom walls and floors.
Especially striking is the see-through blonde/brown wood planks enclosing the walk-in wardrobe plus foyer. Woven cocoon lamps hang to the left and right of the bed. There is a Vietnamese traditional teapot and cups, with tea to brew – ideally paired with some pastries brought from Baguette’s bakery (also selling Vietnamese chocolate and with late afternoon happy hour).
Elsewhere, Terrasse, on lobby level overlooking the resort and beach, offers three hours of happy hour on drinks.
Friday BBQ at Beach House is recommended for dining (incl. free-flowing wine, beer) with grill stations outdoors and choices of seafood, meats, or à la minute Vietnamese pancake with peanut sauce – all washed down with a French Sauvignon Blanc! Heart of palm salad with prawn and pork and a very crisp Vermicelli noodle salad are buffet recommendations. The background music is just right for the stylish Vietnamese dining setting: down-tempo and bossa nova tunes. For a lighter dessert choose Coconut & Mango Pannacotta.
Elsewhere, Green House serves à la carte throughout the day and an imposing breakfast spread featuring
for instance bircher muesli, smoothies (banana, mango, almond and vanilla etc.), feta cheese and Vietnamese fried eggs (with fish sauce).
Guests opting for Regency Club access also get to enjoy evening canapés and drinks served on top of a huge marble slab placed in the centre of the private club lounge (including separate adult zone): Chicken Ratatouille, Tuna Foccacia, Smoked Salmon etc. These are hours to savour and good moments for intimate conversations or book reading and wine sipping.
EU-Vietnam Free Trade to benefit trade with Sweden
It is expected that Vietnam will have great potential in increasing the export of textiles, footwear, farm produce, food, handicrafts and chemicals to Sweden, when the Eu
ropean Union-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) takes effect, reports the Vietnamese daily Nhân Dhân.
The EVFTA at the time only
needed to be ratified by the Vietnamese government scheduled for May 2020.
However, the Vietnamese Trade Office in Sweden said that while the Swedish population spend a large amount of money on textile products, rice, tea, coffee, cocoa, fruits and vegetables, the Swedish distributors require an improvement of Vietnamese regulations on quality and packaging standards, according to Nhân Dhân.
In 2019, the trade between Vietnam and Sweden hit $1.56 billion, with Vietnam ranked 24th among the biggest exporters to Sweden.
Vietnam gives thousands of face masks to Sweden
The Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, To Anh Dung, presented on 17 April 2020 a token to symbolize the 100.000 antibacterial face masks Vietnam is giving Sweden for free to support the Scandinavian country in the fight on COVID-19. The Ambassador of Sweden in Vietnam Ann Mawe accepted the token on behalf of Sweden.
The Deputy Minister emphasized international cooperation and unity as essential to protecting people’s health, according to the Vietnamese daily Vietnam Express International.
The Swedish Ambassador in Vietnam thanked the Vietnamese government and the citizens of Vietnam for their help, citing the face masks ‘a valuable gift that represents the friendly and supportive relationship between the Asian and Scandinavian country’.
Vietnam has also sent medical equipment to Cambodia, China, Indonesia and Laos.
Successes and failures the norm in the world of start-ups Scandinavian entrepreneur shares insights
By Joakim Persson
This is the story about building a start-up and how things can go wrong, depending on how one goes about things, and with some valuable lessons learned, admirably shared by Tommy Lissau Gotfredsen, a Dane who already in 2005 successfully founded and built an online fan base for a community portal in Singapore called Nightlife. sg, while he was a Bachelor Degree-student there This coincided with the dawn for social media.
This adventure had given him appetite for more, when he many years later embarked on realising a neighbourhood platform for commercial announcements based on one’s physical location, called Meeof. All successful entrepreneurs say that before and in-between successes they have always failed – many times. Most ideas, and projects, never survive - for a variety of reasons and hiccups.
As for Tommy’s first adventure, nightlife.sg, it came into trouble due to how “early” the concept was in terms of social media. Bandwith was a big issue back in 2005. As recently as ten years ago Internet speed was still an issue even in five-star hotels in Singapore, and the mobile networks were not yet the main suppliers of high speed internet.
Tommy’s social media concept for nightlife.sg was to take pictures of people within the nightlife scene, publish them online, and allow the public to become users, with personal profiles.
“Within three months after launch, from being no one on the market we had reached 33% market share. After six months we had 40 000 people on our platform, every relevant discotheque knew about us and we had partnerships with everyone. We also won two awards in the first two years of operations. We grew so fast that our hosting solution shut us down over night because we were using too much, forty per cent, of their entire band with,” he recalls. You read right, the hosting shut them down, without prior notification! This was of course very damaging to Nightlife.sg’s reputation.
“We had just signed contracts with Jägermeister, Heineken etc. to do branding on our website. We were in the early stages of generating revenue.”
Eventually the hosting company came back with an offer to go from 70 SGD per month to 2,000 SGD in cost.
“Back in 2005 you didn’t have this vibrant start-up scene that you have today, so I couldn’t find anyone to invest in it. But at the same time there was another Danish company in the online industry that we approached for collaboration partnership. They were trying to set up dating sites etc. and had also to set up in Singapore. I could not see how I could collaborate with them when I could not even keep my website up and running properly. So I sold the whole company to them and joined them as an employee. But I learned at lot in that year for myself while working for them. At the end of that journey, around mid 2006, I decided to focus on my bachelor degree and migrate back to Denmark and start a job.”
Fast forward to 2016 and Tommy is back in Singapore - and with a new idea. And this time the circumstances are different. He has relocated back from Denmark, with his Singaporean wife, who has been assigned to set up her Danish employer’s Asia-Pacific operations. Tommy’s employer, Sanofi, also finds him an overseas job there, in charge of the commercial and digital solution center.
“We had a good combined income by now and I was thinking back at my nightlife.sg experience, where I had made so many mistakes. If I did that again could I be successful? So we decided that I would embark on building this new business based on an idea that had been brewing for a number of years.”
It was based on a problem scenario that Meeof would solve; focusing on attracting and engaging with people to visit physical stores and malls: “In retail, in fastmoving goods, everyone is going e-commerce, trying to lure everyone to their website and close the sale. There are so many tactics that e-commerce sites can use to lure customers back as well. More and more offline retail stores see people come in to try clothes, shoes etc. to see if they fit well - who then leave the store and go online to buy items at lower prices.”
“If I’m a new tourist in Singapore I don’t know the local shopping scene, I am not aware of all the promotions happening around town.”
“Meeof was founded on the principle that we should give the digital marketing power back to the retail stores. Meaning: if I’m within say 200 metres of a certain store and if there is a match with my profile and I’m a frequent buyer of the brand, then the technology will ping my phone and inform of a brand store next door. ‘You are a returning or premium customer so we can give you very personalised discount. Not everyone going into the store gets this!’ By using this, stores can pull customers in by using digital technologies such as notifications to your phone.”
There was also a specific incentive for businesses to come on board and utilise the proximity-based tool: events. “If anyone saw an event happening around you, you could take a photo of it and tell where you are. You put it on to Meeof and anyone within the proximity could see that there is a promotion happening right now. So it was not just for the retail companies to tell you what they have but Meeof was to help as well, via crowd sourcing.”
“Living within five minutes from a mall in Singapore I myself missed many cool events for my kids just because I didn’t know. And the places where you find such information are if you subscribe to a particular mall for instance. If you don’t subscribe to everything you won’t know what’s
Tommy Lissau Gotfredsen. Photo: Joakim Persson.
One of the key decisions that Tommy made early was to go for outsourcing, since Meeof was very much his own “baby”. He has found one angel investor that supported the project. Aside that Tommy handled all the operational side and development.
“I started out and hired a company in Singapore, to have the provider close to me, tasked to build the native app. They had done many apps before and proclaimed to be the best in town. They were quite pricy and I paid them almost 50 000 Singapore dollars for the job. Everything was outsourced to them. Because I didn’t want to worry about technology, I wanted to concentrate on business development.”
The provider allocated a project manager, and Tommy submitted a very detailed PowerPoint, with all the pre-works and including the requests. This project manager then rewrote that into a formal requirements document, and with Tommy’s documents attached, essentially as the basis for what was to be delivered 4 months later.
“The work document was very loosely defined but I was O.K with that because I knew I was going to get what was in my document, as that had been agreed.”
Then problems started to occur, with two project managers after each other leaving their job at the vendor. And months passed by without getting any result. When confronted, the CEO of the company confessed that they had outsourced the job to a third party in Vietnam - who was refusing to continue as the requirements did not match Tommy’s PowerPoint (which they had not shared). Tommy ended up awarding them an extra month and paying another 6,000 dollars to get the job done.
But the problems escalated, as Tommy was presented with the first look of the result - after three and a half months. It contained 500 issues, which he listed and sent back for fixing. Then it continued like this, with issues being sent back and forth that were still not being fixed in the application. After another four months the Dane decided to part with the vendor.
“I was doing it part-time while having my full time job. It had been going on for about eight months. I decided to quit my job and to stop building native apps. I could instead quickly build a website to prove that this technology was going to work and raise interest for it.”
So, within the next four months he built the website, fully available with location-based marketing and profiles and where companies would join. It was launched in June 2017.
But there was a catch with this. “I knew that. Only when your mobile phone is turned on, with the website on you would get a notification - which is obviously a very big limitation for success. But the objective was to build the website and get a lot of PR out there and then get some investors in and help me hire people to build the native apps. So there was a reverse strategy to success because I couldn’t get the people to build it for me,
missing a large enough budget. The angel investor that I had found gave high risk investment to try and get to the Proof of Concept stage,” Tommy explains.
“We did a massive push, with paid advertising to get people to join this. We reached that we had about 50 people who were sharing stuff and we had a lot of traffic coming to the website but not many signed up.”
When visitors were asked they responded they could not find the app in the app store and therefore had not joined. Also, some eight VC companies responded that they liked the idea but needed to see at least 20 000 people in the database and at least five big malls as customers. Then they would consider investing with growth money. With an app even a local radio station was be willing to dedicate a whole programme to promote the concept.
This gave Tommy new energy to turn back to realising the native app. “We started out with a Chinese vendor that was given the source code but wanted to start from scratch. Things looked promising for one month but then it seemed they started dragging their feet, because they were paid weekly, so they saw that the longer it would take the more money they would earn. So I fired them and instead found a start-up company in Sri Lanka.
This time the provider was even promised equity, no less than 20 %, in the company, upon delivering the native apps for both Android and IOS, and would remain the main tech company for all development.
“This Sri Lankan company got very excited and started delivering some amazing works for about 8 weeks, and I was finally thinking: ‘Now, we’re going to get it this done – at last!’”
Unfortunately, yet again, and despite have partnered up, also with this company issues started to occur, and with really bad responsiveness.
“The passion that they had had just seemed to die. So I flew to Sri Lanka and sat with all the developers for two weeks. Being a developer I could scrutinize the code myself and see what was going on. And after that trip I decided that I had had enough; they were simply not able to do the job for me. When it came to the logical implementation of it they were simply not capable. The competence, the technical aspects were not there. Now another 15 000 dollars had been wasted.”
Here, the start-up adventure came to an end for Tommy.
By February 2018 Tommy went back into the corporate world, having been offered a very attractive job with AstraZeneca.
“I got excited about the thought of making money again and the angel investor agreed to shut down the project, because we did not know when we would be able to get the product launched. I paid him back the 60 000 SGD that was still left from his investment.”
“AstraZeneca is a great place to work at and I‘ve got good responsibilities and good career path opportunities so I wouldn’t put that at jeopardy to start something again. We’ve got kids too so I need to manage my risk responsibly.”
“Among the lessons learned... one is definitely that if you want to launch a tech company start-up you need to get co-founders in with you that have a skin in the game. I am a website developer but I needed an app developer as co-founder and either of us with sales and marketing experience. Probably three or four people would have been needed in the team that all had skin in the game, equity and the motivation to make it work. Otherwise you’ll struggle with vendors,” concludes Tommy.
