Expert views, founder stories and sharp analysis decoding the forces shaping Asia.
Nguyen Hoang Duong asked us to distinguish company-reported results from independently verified evidence. The distinction reveals a broader challenge for Southeast Asian technology companies seeking global trust.
Vietnam closed 2025 with a record 21.2 million international arrivals, and everyone in the industry agrees on the binding constraint: not rooms, not routes, but people. Elegance Hospitality Group, the Hanoi-born boutique chain whose La Siesta hotels keep beating the world’s giants in guest-voted rankings, has spent two decades building an unusual answer. Its chairman, Do Van Dan, treats service culture the way an engineer treats a structure: designed, load-tested, and measured by how it behaves when no one is watching. BriefAsia spent a morning on the floor with him.
Nguyễn Huỳnh trained as an architect, worked in branding, and then spent 40 million đồng opening a coffee shop behind a bridge in District 4. Three years, two viral explosions and more than 148,000 avoided plastic cups later, his bamboo-tube coffee brand is fielding partnership offers from five Southeast Asian countries and the United States, and still refuses to hurry. BriefAsia spoke to the 29-year-old founder about slowness, copycats, craft, and what a three-metre storefront knows that a CSR report doesn’t.
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