The trend of upgrading limousine interiors worth billions in Vietnam

The increasing need for relaxation when traveling long distances among Vietnamese people has led to the development of limousine services.

About 5 years ago, the interior modification of vans like Ford Transit, Mercedes Sprinter into high-end luxury living rooms was quite new in Vietnam. Occasionally, a few cars belonging to businessmen or artists appeared on the market. At the same time, in Thailand and some Asian countries, this trend was on the rise.

10-seat interior of a Transit.>> Detailed image

Some companies caught the trend, started to modify cars and find customers. At first, they mainly made cars according to customers' requests, with the service of re-inspecting from 16 seats to 9-10 seats. But then, these companies proactively created modified cars and offered them to customers. Ford Transit is the most used van model because of its genuine supply and advantages of being spacious and affordable. Meanwhile, its competitor Mercedes Sprinter is no longer officially distributed.

The average price for each van modified to a mobile living room or business class cabin is around 1 billion VND. Combined with the initial price of a new car, customers may have to pay 1.5-2 billion VND for each car, depending on the quantity and quality of the details appearing on the car.

Businessmen often choose to upgrade the interior into 4 business class seats with full entertainment and relaxation equipment such as high-end sound system, flat screen TV, decorative lights, bar, refrigerator, massage chair. However, this type of customer does not bring production scale to the company.

The most popular vehicle type today is the limousine, in which the 16-45 seater vehicles are modified in a style with fewer seats, leather upholstery, and more equipment on the vehicle, making the passenger car closer to the service on the plane. The Ford Transit usually has only 10 seats, creating distance and comfortable space for each customer.

The 29-seat Hyundai County has an interior that has only 12 seats.>> Detailed image

The target users of this type of vehicle are companies providing tourism services, transporting passengers on routes or picking up VIP guests. According to the owner of a passenger transport company in Thanh Hoa, this type of vehicle is popular with customers because it is not crowded during peak days, the vehicle runs on time and the price is acceptable.

If with a regular bus, the ticket price for a 150 km route is about 80,000-100,000 VND, with a limousine, the price is from 150,000-200,000 VND, although 1.5-2 times higher, but the service quality is good so customers do not hesitate too much.

The demand for limousines has increased, so car companies are ordering more from the company. A limousine company in Ho Chi Minh City said that it sells 10-15 cars per month. If not counting the price of the car, the cost of upgrading is about 300-600 million VND, the highest-end model can cost up to nearly 1 billion VND.

A fairly famous limousine manufacturer also in Saigon had even higher sales, about 500 cars in 2015. This company also invested in opening a separate factory to produce some parts used for car tuning. Smaller companies mainly import parts from abroad.

Currently, most companies make cars in a closed system for customers, from the stage of buying new cars from dealers, making interiors, registering and delivering cars to customers.

According to VNE