The information of Vietnam weaving Visa for 5 countries unilaterally including: Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Spain could be a happy news for Vietnam tourism but in term of Tourism development, it is just a temporary solution in the context of Vietnam’s tourism industry declination for the past 13 months and the question is: Waiving Visa significantly increase traffic?

If someone says the leaders of Vietnam are day-dreamers to believe that the small money of Visa could be enough for the motivation of their travel then we are sure that many people will agree.

The fact is that very few tourists from the above 5 countries who are – as Mr. Tran Anh Tuan  Minister of Vietnam Tourism reported that: Spending weeks to make their Visa done to get ready for their travel and that: They are spontaneous people who arrange their holidays or weekends within just few days.” – not as the leaders’ thought.

The first thing is the distance: They are too far to travel to Vietnam without a plan. Look at the map to find out that it is more than 12 hours for them to fly to Vietnam.

The second thing is that Westerners are very careful and they plan their trip months before the travel. They even plan to travel years before the travel as they can get the cheap airline tickets.

The third thing is the fact that very few tourists now use their traditional way to earn Visa to Vietnam. When they search the tour information to Vietnam, everybody can advise them a Free Visa On Arrival which will require them only the stamp fee and few mouse click. Some go through Flight tickets agency and get the Visa done with the flight. 

So getting Visa to Vietnam for the 5 above nations is not as hard as before or at least not as hard as the Minister was thinking.

Then what will be the long term solution for Vietnam Tourism? This one was hardly found in any reports of the government. The following 02 reasons will be the killing factors to Vietnam tourism if we want to develop.

1. Weak National Tourism Image: In Vietnam, as tourism is not a single department and still under control of Culture – Tourism and Sport Ministry so that the care is limited. Advertisement are also limited and we see that we even do not have a real Tourism Ambassador.

2. Expensive airlines: It is more or less still 01 airline company in Vietnam: Vietnam airline. So flying into Vietnam is quite expensive and tourists normally have to fly over to transit at another country before getting to Vietnam. 

We do hope that the mentioned factors would be agreed by readers and we also do hope that everyone in Vietnam can be a true ambassador of Vietnam tourism and the national tourism can develop better in the near future!