Vietnamese Prime Minister, Pham Minh Chinh has requested the expansion of Vietnam’s visa waiver scheme to increase tourism arrivals during a national conference.
The Prime Minister also asked for creating better conditions for airlines at the domestic and international level to open routes to Vietnam and enable tourists to visit the Southeast Asian country, VisaGuide.World reports.
The current policy enables citizens of 13 countries such as South Korea, Japan, Russia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, France, Belarus, Germany, the UK, Spain and Italy to visit Vietnam exempted from visa requirements for a stay of 15 days. This policy will remain effective until March 14, 2025, and it can be further extended.
Furthermore, the government has also reached agreements to exempt from visa requirements passport holders of 12 countries – Indonesia, Cambodia, Chile, Kyrgyzstan, Panama, Malaysia, Laos, Thailand, Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines and Myanmar.
On the other hand, Vietnam’s passport has a score of 21.16, ranking it 143rd at the international level. According to VisaGuide.World Passport Index, the Vietnamese passport enables its holders to visit 22 countries without a visa, two with only an Electronic Travel Authorisation and another 30 with a visa-on-arrival. In another 23 countries, Vietnamese citizens can travel through an e-visa while they have to obtain a visa to visit 149 countries in the world.
Vietnam is heavily dependent on the tourism industry and the country receives millions of tourists every year, with 18 million arrivals being recorded in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The latter affected the tourism industry in 2020 and 2021, while in March 2022, Vietnam opened its doors to international tourists, becoming one of the first countries to resume tourism in the world.
In 2022, the number of tourists to Vietnam reached 3.7 million, generating VND 495 trillion or $21 billion to the country’s economy, which is 23 percent higher than the country anticipated.
In addition to a recovery in tourism, Vietnam has made evident efforts to improve factors like service infrastructure, and environmental stability as well as prioritising travel and tourism, as the World Economic Forum (WEF) revealed.
The same report shows that Vietnam’s tourism development has ranked 52nd in 2019, out of 117 economies on the 2021 Tourism Development Index, noting the country’s good performance in price competitiveness, air transport, safety and security as well as natural resources.
This year, Vietnam’s tourism sector aims to welcome 110 million visitors – eight million of which are foreigners and generate VND 650 trillion, equivalent to $ 27.65 billion.
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