Hanoi Metropole Developments

VinaCapital, which has a 50% stake in the historic Hanoi Metropole Hotel is up for grabs. The other 50% is owned by the Hanoi government (i.e. the Communist Party of Vietnam), which exercises all control over the business according to local law. Vietnam’s economy has, once again, been the phoenix that failed to rise and so VinaCapital wants out of its assets in the country. The question, from a heritage point of view, is what is the likely future of the Metopole? The cost to anyone will be high (US$58.7mn some say in the FT) and that’s for a stake with no real control over the development and running of the hotel.We shall see what happens.

Of course the Metropole is a gem – Charlie Chaplin and W Somerset Maugham stayed there, and of course Grahame Greene. And so, The Quiet American (1955):

“It was cold after dark in Hanoi and the lights were lower than those of Saigon, more suited to the darker clothes of the women and the fact of war. I walked up the rue Gambetta to the Pax Bar – I didn’t want to drink in the Metropole with the senior French officers, their wives and their girls, and as I reached the bar I was aware of the distant drumming of the guns out towards Hoa Binh.”

With a classic Citroen DS outside…

the famous terrace where the hacks all sat…