Retail giant Lotte opens $250 mln mega mall in Hanoi

South Korea's Lotte Shopping opened a $250 million mega commercial complex in Hanoi Friday as part of Lotte Group’s continuous investment expansion in Vietnam.

The new property, Lotte Mall West Lake, features a shopping mall, a supermarket, a hotel, an aquarium, a movie theater, and other major Lotte affiliates.

Following Friday’s soft opening, Lotte Shopping plans a grand official opening of the mall on September 22.

The complex has a gross floor area of about 354,000 square meters, about 50 soccer fields in size, according to the retail arm of Lotte Group, South Korea's fifth-largest conglomerate.

It aims to make the new mall a premier landmark and central business hub in Hanoi, the firm said.

The complex’s basement will house Lotte Mart, a grocery store spreading over 4,300 square meters. In addition, Bottle Bunker, a wine specialty store, will occupy some 800 square meters.

The Lotte World Aquarium Hanoi at the mall will be the largest downtown aquarium in Vietnam with an area of about 9,000 square meters and a 3,400-ton tank.

Another arm of Lotte Group that is expanding in Vietnam is Lotte Duty Free, which opened a new store in Danang city last November. Vietnam was “a strong foundation” for maintaining the group’s leading position in Southeast Asia, the company said then.

It also plans to open a store in downtown Hanoi this year as part of what it calls the Lotte Duty Free Belt in the Asia Pacific region. The company has not provided further details, including the site location.

In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s southern economic hub, Lotte Group is developing its $900 million multi-function Eco Smart City on the Thu Thiem peninsula.

The project will cover 50,000 square meters, comprising a shopping mall, a hotel, office buildings, serviced apartments and a residential complex. It will include five underground floors and 60 above and deploy smart technologies, the company said.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade’s data shows that Vietnam's total retail sales of consumer goods and services in the first six months of 2023 was VND3,016 trillion ($127.4 billion), up 11% year-on-year. Of which, revenue from accommodation and food services increased 18.7%, tourism 65.9%, and retail sales of goods 9.3%. Many forecasts indicate that domestic demand will better recover in the second half of the year.

From July 1, VAT has been cut for many groups of consumer goods from 10% to 8%, and the base salary for cadres, civil servants, public employees and armed forces has increased by 20% from VND1.49 million to VND1.8 million ($76) per month. These factors are expected to contribute to increasing market demand, directly affecting the expected sales of retail businesses, said the trade ministry.