Hotel Continental, Ho Chi Minh City

The Hôtel Continental is a hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. It was named after the Hôtel Continental in Paris, and is located in District 1, the central business district of the city. The hotel is situated by the Saigon Opera House and was built in 1880 by the French. The hotel has undergone a few refurbishments over the years, whilst still maintaining the essence of its original architecture and style.

Hotel Continental is owned by the state-owned Saigon Tourist.

The Ho Chi Minh City Hotel Continental has been also been featured in the Hollywood movie The Quiet American, an adaptation of Graham Greene's novel with the same name. Another movie in which it was featured was Indochine. This film and Greene's Quiet American illustrate the central place the Continental had in the social and political life of Saigon during the French Colonial Era. It is located near the City Post Office, built in 1891, the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City Building (1898, formerly the Hotel De Ville) and Notre Dame Cathedral (1880). Graham Greene lived in the Continental while writing "The Quiet American" and working as a journalist during the latter days of the French Colonial period. It is located on the intersection of Le Loi street and the bustling Dong Khoi Street, Rue Catinat during the days of the French. The Continental was also home to the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (1913 Nobel Prize for Literature) and Andre Malraux (1933 Prix Goncourt for "Man's Fate," as well as other journalists, celebrities, politicians and heads of state.

The Hotel Continental Saigon is situated on Dong Khoi, one of the oldest and most central roads in Saigon. In the old days, Saigon’s roads were simply named by ordinal numbers. Starting from the SaigonRiver bank, Dong Khoi was the Sixth Road. In 1865, the French Commander De La Grandiere renamed these roads and Sixth Road became Catinat Street, a bustling place, especially during the French Colonial Era."Catinat Street" at one time was a very bustling and crowded place, especially with the French. Later on, across the street from the Continental the first foundations and floors for factories were built, the first one for Denis Frere. Next was the first drugstore in Saigon, the “Solinere Pharmaceutical,” which opened in 1865.

In 1878, Pierre Cazeau, a home-appliance and construction material manufacturer, started building the Hotel Continental with the purpose of providing the French traveler, a French style of luxury accommodation after a long cruise to the new continent. This project took 2 years, and in 1880 the “Hotel Continental” was inaugurated.

The same generation that saw the Hotel Continental Saigon being built also saw: Notre Dame Cathedral, built in 1880 (only a 5 minute walk from the hotel), the Postal and Telecom Service, built in 1886 (which is now the Saigon Central Post Office), and the Hotel de Ville, built in 1898 (which is now the People’s Community Office of Ho Chi Minh City). The latter has a design similar to the Paris City Hall.

In the year 1911, the Continental was sold to Duke Montpensier. In 1930, the hotel had a new owner, Mathier Francini, a gangster from Corsica, who ran the hotel until 1975. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Saigon Government commanded all signboards be written in Vietnamese language; therefore the name “Hotel Continental” was converted to "Dai Luc Lu Quan".

By the beginning of World War II, the Hotel Continental hosted the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (who won the 1913 Nobel Prize for literature), the award-winning writer Andre Malraux, whose “Man’s Fate” won the 1933 Prix Goncourt, and then the British writer Graham Greene, long-term guest in room 214, who conceived the work “The Quiet American” about the transitional period between the French Colonist and the American Empire in the Vietnam War. The Continental features prominently in “The Quiet American” in both its film and book forms. The Continental also is a central locale in the movie “Indochine” which won two Academy Awards and one Golden Globe.

The Hotel Continental was frequently referred to by the phrase “Radio Catinat”, since this was the rendezvous point where correspondents, journalists, politicians and businessmen talked about politics, the business news, and current events.

During the American period, Catinat Street was known as Tu Do Street. Following liberation in 1975, the name "Tu Do" was changed to "Dong Khoi". Thus history turned a new page, and many outstanding people such as Jacques Chirac (Mayor of Paris during that period), the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed, and many other politicians stayed at the Hotel Continental to exchange views on the future of a new Vietnam.