TMG CEO Message to our Valued Customers and Partners on Covid-19

Dear Valued Customers and Partners,

What is happening in the world, in Vietnam and what is happening in TMG?

The Covid-19 outbreak has become one of the biggest disruptors to the world in this century. We are seeing a global pandemic that is affecting billions of lives in many ways. Countries are fighting the outbreak to protect their population with unprecedented measures including closing cities, country borders and banning travel. There have been dear and sustained economic impacts leading to many people suggesting that the world might go into a recession this year and the markets around the world have responded exceeding the level we saw in 2009.

Vietnam is a country with a long border with China and Chinese tourists accounted for 33% of our 18M international arrivals in 2019. Our government has however made quick, decisive and responsible actions early on to close borders and flights and as a result, there were only 16 confirmed cases that were all recovered. The situation has now changed as the epicenter of the outbreak moved to Europe and from March 7^th until today there have been 69 new confirmed cases which all could track down to imported sources and there seem to be no community transmission at this point in time. The Vietnamese government has mobilized all available resources and determined to follow access denial and spread denial strategy. As of today, there will be no tourist arrival into the country over the next 30 days. No visas will be issued and very few flights are still operating mostly to transport Vietnamese homes.

The last few weeks have been challenging for many of us. The situation has been worsening by the day and in a very short time, the world of travel and tourism and been brought to a complete halt. At TMG, we had a great start of the year and January was one of our best months ever. It has however been challenging from mid of February as the situation unfold. Our experience and resources have allowed us to operate safely over the last two months focusing on the health and safety of our team and guests. We have managed to serve thousands of guests with our heartfelt services when hospitality and indeed humanity is most needed. As of today, all of our hotels are still open for guests and we continue welcoming all the last trapped guests, expats and domestic clients in Vietnam. We believe more than ever that people need a home that is warm, safe and clean and needs serving of healthy and tasty foods during these stressful times. All of TMG 11 hotels, 3 cruise groups have been striving to do exactly that while supporting the government ‘s guidance to protect our population and communities.  We have thus closed our Halong Cruises, Victoria Cruises, and Victoria Mekong on March 17^th following requests by the local authorities.

What will the future look like?

No one could really predict the future as the situation is very fluid and we must learn to live with the highest level of uncertainty. We have seen many scenarios and models but the truth remains that we are living in extremely uncertain times. We are however certain that things will get much worse before getting better. We are certain that people will travel again and demands will return though we really don’t know when. And, we are also certain that when people travel again, they will appreciate the refined, authentic, charming and safe TMG’s assets vs huge, massive ones.

We will be closing some of our hotels and cruises in Vietnam over the next three months (April, May, and June) or until demands return.