Tourists visit “the seven-acre coconut garden” in Hoi An City's Cam Thanh Commune.
In the first five months of this year, the number of foreigners arriving in Vietnam reached around 365,300, growing by 4.5 times compared to the same period last year.
This year’s target of five million international visitors will be a great challenge for the tourism industry.
Although the strong recovery of domestic tourism has contributed to the resumption of business operations, international tourists help the tourism sector handle the seasonal balancing of revenue and demand between peak season and off-season, constantly improve the quality of tourist products and services, and stably develop.
The country’s tourism industry needs to focus on proposing visa exemptions, renewing products, promoting the strong points of community-based tourism, sea and island tourism, and leisure tourism in accordance with the National Tourism Year 2022’s theme of “Quang Nam - A green tourism destination”. In addition, management units must pay attention to checking and raising the quality of human resources, improvement of destinations, and digitalization to create favorable conditions for the tourism industry to achieve the goal of receiving five million visitors this year, said Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Nguyen Van Hung.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has proposed to lift health insurance or travel insurance with coverage of at least US$10,000 for Covid-19 treatment for foreign arrivals entering Vietnam, towards the removal of the document No. 829/PA-BVHTTDL on its plan to reopen the tourism sector in the new normal.
Although the Government has removed travel restrictions, tourism policies of the country are less flexible than neighboring nations, such as Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore, said experts.
Visa-open countries attract the largest number of foreign visitors. Vietnam has resumed visa exemption for citizens from 13 countries. While the visa exemption rule allows tourists from 65 countries to enter Thailand without a visa. Visitors are granted a maximum of 60 days if they are entering Thailand many times. Travelers entering Indonesia can apply for a visa that is valid for 30 days, and can be extended.
Notably, many customers are willing to pay more for greater convenience. Travel companies, likely Saigontourist, Vietravel, Fiditour - Vietluxtour, TSTtourist, BenThanh Tourist have offered special products for the post-covid luxury spending boom.
