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Ten years ago, with Southeast Asia still plagued by the after-effects of the 1997 Financial Crisis, a stately symbol of Vietnam's renewal and resurgence opened its doors - again - on Lam Son Square. After a $65 million investment, including the addition of a 24-storey tower to the original 10-story landmark, the Caravelle Hotel was back. It was bigger, bolder and better than before, and its vision was firmly fixed on the future of the city, the country and the region. If any restoration symbolized the restoration of Vietnam's promise, it was the Caravelle Hotel's.
Today, with another decade of history to its credit, the Caravelle is still firmly fixed on the future. In 2007, Vietnam won admission to the World Trade Organization and a place on the Security Council of the United Nations - landmark achievements, to be sure, and harbingers of Vietnam's growing stature among the world community of nations. Throughout Vietnam, business is booming like never before. The Caravelle knows this as well as anyone. One only has to look at the legions of 'suits' marching through its doors to understand that the exclamation point now affixed to the name of this country has little to do with the legacy of war and everything to do with the promise of prosperity.
GREEN IS GOOD
Prosperity engenders new challenges, of course. One challenge that the Caravelle is taking to heart has a color, and that color is Green.
"It's not enough for any of us in the hotel industry to simply consume resources with abandon anymore, even if we can afford them," said Caravelle General Manager John Gardner. "In a nation as taxed for space and resources as Vietnam, and in a world where we can all of a sudden see the sun setting on resources we've always assumed would be around forever, it's our feeling - no, our responsibility - to get out in front on this issue and do what we can to preserve what we have."
When it comes to environmental initiatives and hotels, most people think of signs that direct people to hang towels on the shower rod if they'd prefer that housekeeping leave the towel for repeat use. A nice gesture, but ultimately one of confusion. The Caravelle's planned Green Initiatives for its second decade since refurbishment go beyond bathroom towels to a systematic plan to reduce the hotel's carbon footprint.
In the works is the appointment of an environmental engineer who'll both monitor and audit the hotels' consumption. New policies for the reduction of paper consumption are on the way. And the hotel is examining the ways and means of its energy consumption.
"So much of what we consume is measurable," said Gardner. "That's where we're starting. Once we've established our baseline, we're going to start whittling, pruning, shaving, cutting and, quite frankly, stopping. All of us will have to undergo training on this because saving on the level that I'm talking about is not reflexive for most us. But it can be, and that's where we need to be."
BRAND NEW DAY
The hotel's Green Initiatives will not be especially visible to guests and visitors. Most of this work will takes place at the infrastructural heart of the property. But the Caravelle will communicate its plans to guests and the community at large. Why make noise about this issue? Two reasons. First, it's important for the growing numbers of guests for whom these initiatives are important to know that they're staying in an environmentally smart hotel. As well, the hotel wants to set a standard for others to follow. The Caravelle has been first with so many amenities and initiatives since opening nearly 50 years ago. The hotel likes that tradition.
What guests will see as the Caravelle begins its second decade since refurbishment is an exhaustive refurbishment of rooms and suites. These renovations are already underway. The hotel has two mock-up rooms with the new design scheme. Over the next two years, plans call for room-by-room refreshment, from floor to ceiling, from bathroom to bedroom, from linens to furnishings.
"We're taking it right back to the concrete shell and starting over," said Martyn Davies, Director General of Chains Caravelle Joint Venture Company. "What's in place now has served us remarkably well over the past decade. But styles change. People's sense of what's cool and fresh evolves, and we've got to evolve with those expectations."
The Caravelle's Signature Floor guests are already getting a taste of what's to come for all 335 of the hotel's rooms. All of the bedding, from the mattresses to the linens, the electronics and other amenities have all made that critical evolutionary jump.
"We're talking about a leap for the Caravelle that's commensurate with the same leap we made when we made Restaurant Nineteen," said Davies. "We pulled out all the stops for Nineteen, and we're planning to do the same now in rooms throughout the hotel."
STAFFING UP
Even before plans for the recognition of this anniversary got underway, the Caravelle dedicated itself to the achievement of greater heights in one of the hotel's greatest assets: its staff. In the past year, the finely polished ranks of staff have been buffed to an even higher sheen as managers throughout the hotel set new goals for guest-staff relations. A new suite of training initiatives have come to center stage; properly incentivized staff now work toward higher, international standards; and morale, at the same time, is rising.
"We're hearing it from guests all the time now," said Gardner. "In the past several months alone, I can't tell you how many guests have told me that they've come halfway around the world from home and found a home away from home. That sounds trite, I know, but as a general manager of a hotel, I can tell you that there is no finer tribute to what we've accomplished."
The staff, business traveler say, is what makes this place shine. "I've been coming back to the Caravelle once or twice a year since the third month after the new tower went up," said Mike Moran, a medical equipment industry executive from New York City, "and I'm greeted by people who know my name, who remember when I gave up smoking and who notice that I've lost weight! What more can I ask from a hotel!"
AN ICON ON THE VERGE OF FIFTY
Mr. Moran speaks to a culture of caring that's an intrinsic part of the Caravelle's charm. What he does not mention is what attracts many travelers to the hotel in the first place: A heritage that's among the most storied in all of Vietnam. For one tumultuous decade between 1965 and 1975, Vietnam was a mainstay on the front pages of newspapers around the world as the Vietnamese fought for the reunification promised by the Geneva Conference in 1954. Throughout that time, the Caravelle was incubator to much of the news that informed the world's opinion about Vietnam and the war that raged here.
This is where many of the journalists stayed; this is where they wrote their news; and this is where they witnessed the eruptions of war. Many journalists' accounts and memoirs mention the inimitable rooftop bar of the Caravelle.
"In the early evenings we'd do exactly what correspondents did in those terrible stories that would circulate in 1964 and 1965, " Michael Herr wrote in his memoir of the war, Dispatches, "we'd stand on the roof of the Caravelle Hotel having drinks and watch the air strikes across the river, so close that a good telephoto lens would pick up the markings on the planes. There were dozens of us up there, like aristocrats viewing Borodino from the heights."
As a tribute to this incomparable legacy, the Caravelle Hotel has commissioned the printing of a book that celebrates the history of the hotel. That book is now in development.
"Few hotels have stood at the center of so much," said Pham Thanh Ha, Deputy General Manager of the hotel. "From its very conception in the late 1950s, it's attracted no small amount of attention from journalists, ambassadors, presidents, Nobel laureates and so many other illustrious personages. A story of a hotel is, collectively, the story of its guests and what happened within its walls. We have a great story, and we can't wait to tell it."
CORRESPONDENT'S CARAVELLE
The story of the hotel begins in the 1950s, during the relative lull between the hot war that concluded with the Geneva Conference and the war that fired up in earnest when the first detachment of U.S. Marines waded ashore at Red Beach in Da Nang in March 1965.
In the 1957, while Joseph L. Mankiewicz was filming the original cinematic spectacle of Graham Greene's The Quiet American in Lam Son Square, a group of investors that included Air France, the Australian Embassy and the Archbishopric of Saigon was preparing to build a state-of-the-art hotel in the heart of the city. And state-of-the-art it was. When the Caravelle opened its doors for business on Christmas Eve in 1959, its amenities were the envy of Vietnam's hospitality scene. Its Italian marble dazzled Saigon, and its bullet-proof glass provided an extra dose of security in a region on the verge of yet another war.
The hotel's air conditioning system was a first for any hotel in Vietnam. Even into the middle 1960s, the novelty of air conditioning was still a selling point in a region where the swelter had always been part of the story.
"I keep it too cold," the manager of the Caravelle told Time magazine in 1964. "I like people to notice that this hotel is air conditioned."
From the very beginning, the hotel has been a setting for pivotal events in the history of Vietnam. Shortly after the hotel opened, its bar was the rendezvous for a group of Saigon intellectuals who came to be known as the Caravellists. Disaffected by the morally rigorous, rigidly Catholic, anti-unification policies of Ngo Dinh Diem, president of South Vietnam, the Caravellists drafted a document in the hotel calling on Diem to ease up on his opponents and grant basic human rights. Diem didn't fancy the difference of opinion presented by the Caravellists. He jailed a number of members and shut down newspapers that criticized him.
By 1962, the hand-writing was on the wall in Vietnam: The Cold War was only going to get hotter. It was then that the roll-call of journalists began in earnest. AP correspondent Peter Arnett spent his first night in Vietnam at the Caravelle, and made a name for himself as a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and later, as a CNN correspondent.
In the early days of the war, the New York Times located its bureau in the Caravelle. Life magazine based its operations here for a time, as did two of the major U.S. networks - ABC and CBS. When media luminaries came calling, from the Nobel prize-winning author John Steinbeck to Oscar-winning film director John Ford, they stayed at the Caravelle.
Walter Cronkite, the legendary American TV news reporter, stayed at the Caravelle during his 1968 tour of the country. It was here, at the tables of this hotel, in its rooms and at its bar, that Cronkite considered America's problem in Vietnam. Later, he made a now famous report to the American people, declaring that the United States was locked in hopeless stalemate in Vietnam. Cronkite's assessment of the war factored prominently into Lyndon Johnson's decision to withdraw from the presidential race in 1968. The rest, as they say, is history.
WHAT'S IN A NAME
If journalism launched the hotel's fame as one of the most famous 'war hotels' in history, it was the Australian Embassy, the Archbishopric of Saigon and Air France that launched the hotel itself. All of these investors funded the hotel's construction, and it was Air France that offered up Caravelle - the name of a new jet in the airline's fleet - as a name for the hotel.
Today, Air France remains one of the hotel's anchor tenants, some 50 years after the original affiliation was born. The hotel treasures the continuity of its relationship with entities like Air France, and with the legions of travelers who return time and again to the rooms and suites of a hotel whose fame was forged by war but whose future envisions peace and prosperity.
For further information please contact:
Ngo Thi Thuy Vy (Ms)
Marketing Communications Manager
Caravelle Hotel
19, Lam Son Square, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Tel: (84-8) 823 4999
Email: mcm [at] caravellehotel [dot] vnn [dot] vn
March 20, 2008
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