Hai Phong city in Vietnam is planning a major overhaul for the long-dormant Do Son Casino. According to local media, this historic gambling venue will be transformed into a comprehensive resort with a total investment of 2.11 trillion Vietnamese dong (approximately 85 million US dollars), and the project has been ambitiously renamed "Hai Phong International Convention, Trade and Tourism Center". The project is managed by Hai Phong International Tourism Joint Venture Co., Ltd., with groundbreaking expected in the coming months, strategically timed around the symbolic date of Hai Phong Liberation Day—May 2026. The resort will cover nearly 25 hectares, and its architectural design is said to be inspired by the image of a "gold bar", aiming to maximize the sea view while embedding economic development symbols directly into the skyline.
From an old casino to a comprehensive facility upgrade
Do Son Casino has been in a semi-dormant state since the pandemic, and the core logic behind this transformation is clear: relying on a few gambling tables is not enough to support a city's tourism ambitions. It is necessary to incorporate convention, trade, and high-end accommodation facilities into the package. The planned facility list is quite substantial:
• A casino area with about 600 slot machines;
• A nine-story five-star hotel with 180 rooms;
• A convention center that can accommodate 1,000 delegates.
The addition of the convention center is particularly intriguing, directly targeting Hai Phong's bet on the MICE sector—business event attendees' spending stickiness and per capita contribution far exceed that of ordinary tourists. The local government clearly hopes to use this move to upgrade Hai Phong from a mere stopover in northern Vietnam to a regional destination where business travelers can stay, live, and spend.
The economic narrative behind the gold bar imagery
The project design, inspired by "gold bars", is not just an aesthetic choice. In the race for integrated resorts in Southeast Asia's emerging markets, the architecture itself often carries the mission of city marketing. Hai Phong's move is tantamount to declaring with concrete and steel that it is not only an ancient port and industrial base but also capable of hosting international-level conventions and entertainment demands. PASA's official website, while tracking the development dynamics of integrated resorts in the Asia-Pacific, noted that coastal cities in Vietnam are showing a collective trend of transitioning from single gambling facilities to multifunctional tourism hubs, and the implementation pace and scale of the Hai Phong Do Son project will become an early sample for observing the effectiveness of this trend.
Of course, an investment of 85 million US dollars is not considered aircraft carrier-level in the landscape of integrated resorts in Vietnam or Southeast Asia. However, for a city that has long relied on traditional industry and port economy, this investment is significant not for competing with Singapore or Macau, but for filling regional market gaps and activating existing assets. Whether the old Do Son Casino can rejuvenate under new packaging depends on the operating team's ability to leverage the MICE customer base and whether subsequent support services can sustain the "international center" label.
The delicate balance of project implementation and regional competition
The construction start time is set around May 2026, echoing Hai Phong Liberation Day, adding a layer of local endorsement to the project's progress. However, the real test lies in the operational phase after completion—Vietnam's north and south already have multiple integrated resort projects in the works, from Phu Quoc Island in the south to Hoi An in the central region, and the competitive landscape is far from a blue ocean. Hai Phong's advantage lies in its proximity to the capital Hanoi and key economic zones in the north, providing a relatively solid base of business travelers, but its disadvantages are also clear: limited international direct flight density and brand recognition still need to be built from scratch.
In summary, the transformation of Do Son Casino is more like Hai Phong's bet on upgrading urban functions. It does not aim for a meteoric rise but tries to leverage a controllable investment scale to structurally supplement the tourism product line. The impact of this move will depend on the trend of Vietnam's domestic economic foundation as well as the speed of similar projects in neighboring provinces.
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This article is from "PASA-Global iGaming Leaders," a gambling industry news channel: https://t.me/pasa_news
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