Visa exemption for citizens of 5 Western European countries for 3 more years
Vietnam continues to extend visa exemption for citizens of five Western European countries for another three years, until June 30, 2021. This decision was made by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc at the April Government meeting, which took place on the afternoon of May 3.
TAt the regular Government press conference in April 2018, Minister and Head of the Government Office, Mr. Mai Tien Dung, said that to remove the bottleneck in tourism, the Government had a high consensus and the Prime Minister concluded to continue visa exemption for 5 Western European countries, including: UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, which will expire at the end of June 2018.
The exemption period this time increased from 1 year to 3 years, starting from July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2021.
According to Minister Mai Tien Dung, in 2016, there were 720,000 Western European visitors to Vietnam, and in 2017, the number increased to 1.5 million. Of course, it is not only the open visa policy that has brought us this result, but also good tourism promotion. Thanks to that, Vietnam has continuously maintained a growth of approximately 30% in international visitors.
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| International visitors to Vietnam grow about 30%/year |
In addition, regarding the increase in the length of stay from 15 to 30 days, or the issue of expanding the list of countries exempted from visas, the Prime Minister wants to re-evaluate the pilot and practice of the previous visa exemption policy.
Visa policy is considered a bottleneck for the tourism industry, because Vietnam is in a low-lying area in the Southeast Asian region with only visa exemptions for citizens of 24 countries, much less than other countries in the region.
Meanwhile, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines each exempt visas for more than 160 markets. Thailand also exempts visas for citizens of 61 countries and territories,...
Meanwhile, Western European tourists have a relatively high spending level. According to the survey results of the General Department of Tourism, the average spending level of tourists from the 5 countries exempted from visas in Vietnam is 1,316 USD. With the number of visitors increasing by 87,000 in 2016, the total direct revenue increased to more than 114 million USD, indirect and spillover revenue reached more than 124 million USD. The total additional revenue from tourists from the 5 Western European countries is estimated to reach more than 238 million USD.
The Tourism Advisory Board (TAB) calculated that when Vietnam exempts visas for 5 Western European countries (high-spending markets), the revenue from visa fees will decrease by about 17.3 million USD, but the number of visitors will increase by over 10%, bringing the revenue to nearly 102 million USD. Instead of the current nearly 700,000 visitors, we can completely attract more visitors out of the total of nearly 5.8 million visitors to the Southeast Asian region each year.
