If you’re feeling like a splurge this week, Expedia is happy to sell you a short-term apartment rental in the north of Vietnam at the bargain price of only 1.2 million USD per night. What is going on here?

Vietnam Apartment Selling For 1.2 million USD per night On Expedia

A friend of mine is traveling to Đà Nẵng in the north of Vietnam and while looking for accommodations, stumbled on a very special apartment at a very premium price: the Minh Anh Apartment in the city of Huế .

And look at the beautiful luxury amenities you receive:

• 431 square feet (wow, palatial…)
• 2 queen beds and 2 large twin sofa beds (room for the whole family!)
• City view (of beautiful Huế)
• Kitchen (because for that money, why would you want to go out to eat?)
• Soap
• Free local class

I’m booking a week!

Sorry, I could not resist.

The answer, to me, seems clear. No one is trying to rent out an apartment for over $1 MN/night. Instead, Expedia is pricing in USD when the apartment should be priced in Vietnamese dong. 1 Vietnamese dong equals 0.000038 United States dollars. Put another way, the 1,253,333 number when priced in dongs equates to 48 USD.

Suddenly it makes sense…

Not that I’d stay there or risk the problem correcting itself…I’d hate to book this on Expedia and have it try to charge my card over $1.2 MN!

These sorts of currency conversion problems are rare, but not unheard of. It was currency conversion issues that led to dirt-cheap tickets originating in Rangoon, Burma (or as some say, Yangon, Myanmar) over a decade ago…what fun days those were…an early battle with SWISS over cancelled tickets which prepared me for later battles.

I’m surprised Expedia does not have some sort of system in place to flag hotels or apartments that are so far outside any reasonable standard of deviation in a hotel market, but if you did decide to book the Minh Anh Apartment, I expect you’d ultimately be charged only $48…

Hat Tip: SINJim