Visa policy to attract international visitors

On March 7, the Government issued Resolution No. 44/NQ-CP on visa exemption for citizens of 12 countries: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland with a temporary stay of 45 days from the date of entry, regardless of passport type or purpose of entry.

This policy will be implemented for three years (from March 15, 2025 to March 14, 2028) and will be considered for extension in accordance with Vietnamese law. Previously, the Government also issued Resolution No. 11/NQ-CP dated January 15, 2025 on visa exemption for a temporary stay of 45 days for citizens of three countries: Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland under the 2025 Tourism Development Stimulus Program. These are considered strong "pushes" to help Vietnam open its doors to international visitors, affirming the appeal of a friendly and hospitable destination.

In addition, easing visa policies also helps us improve our competitiveness in the race to attract international visitors, especially when Vietnam's visa policy has long had many "barriers". This positive move also creates a solid foundation for Vietnam to achieve the goal of welcoming 22-23 million international visitors in 2025.

Experts say that this is the time for Vietnam to focus on multi-channel, multi-platform communication about new points in visa policies to key markets, in parallel with promoting the potential, strengths, and attractiveness of the destination, in order to attract international visitors.

It is easy to see that the countries on the visa exemption list this time are all markets with high spending capacity. This creates motivation for Vietnam to become a destination for the luxury segment, but also puts pressure on us to continue investing in tourism infrastructure, building products rich in creativity and experience value to satisfy the high demand of wealthy customers.

After all, opening the door to welcome visitors is just the beginning, the important thing after that is how to retain tourists, make them stay longer, spend more, want to return to Vietnam many times. And the answer to this question can only be thoughtfulness in providing quality service, professionalism in building products, and completeness in creating experiences for tourists.

In fact, with the development of information technology, the number of independent tourists is increasing. However, this group of tourists is also quite hesitant about having to complete many documents and procedures related to visas. Therefore, to welcome the wave of independent tourism that is "rising" after the pandemic, countries are making efforts to improve the accessibility of destinations through visa policies.

Therefore, many opinions say that Vietnam still needs to continue researching to expand the visa-exempt subjects. Experts suggest that Vietnam can consider visa exemption for some developed countries such as the US, Australia, Canada, etc. to increase the attraction of high-spending tourists.

In addition, the case study of India is important because this is a country with impressive growth in the number of visitors to Vietnam in recent times, and is also a large-scale, potential market that many countries in the region are seeking to attract through open and attractive visa policies.