The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has just received a dispatch from the Tourism Advisory Board (TAB) regarding the proposal for countries and territories to be unilaterally exempted from visas by Vietnam.
In the document, TAB stated that Vietnam is the first country in Southeast Asia to reopen international tourism activities, but the recovery rate of international tourism is much slower than that of regional competitors such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
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Vietnam tourism is waiting for international visitors. Photo: NHAT THINH |
The World Tourism Organization estimates that a more liberal visa policy could increase international tourist arrivals by 5-25% per year. Vietnam has seen this happen since it first exempted visas for five Western European countries. Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore have had much more liberal visa policies than Vietnam before Covid-19, and they are continuing to implement more flexible policies to attract more visitors and longer stays.
With the goal of continuing to expand and diversify markets with the potential for rapid growth, large customer sources, high spending and long-term stays, TAB proposed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in addition to continuing to implement the unilateral visa exemption policy for the group of 13 countries that have been unilaterally exempted from visas, add 33 more countries to the list of unilateral visa exemptions.
In particular, TAB supports the previous proposal of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism on the list of 20 remaining countries in the European Union (including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia) and 5 other countries including: USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Switzerland. In addition, this unit proposed 8 more countries with unilateral visa exemption including: Israel, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates.
In particular, TAB recommends that the Government consider 4 countries and territories as tourism markets with strong development potential, including: China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and India. In case of needing to consider following a roadmap, TAB recommends that the Government consider prioritizing countries that have been unilaterally exempted from visas (13 countries); then priority group 1 (19 countries); priority group 2 (14 countries) and the group recommended for the Government to consider (4 countries and territories).
According to TAB's study on the impact of visa exemption for 5 Nordic countries, the average number of international visitors from the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy increased by nearly 20%. Compared to other ASEAN countries, the impact of Vietnam's unilateral visa exemption is more positive, increasing the number of international tourists, and tourism revenue increases many times higher than the decrease in revenue due to visa exemption.
TAB cited that many countries in the ASEAN region have used visa facilitation policies to attract international visitors, such as Thailand exempting tourist visas for citizens of 64 countries and territories, Indonesia with 70 countries, and the Philippines with 157 countries.
Currently, the Draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Exit and Entry of Vietnamese Citizens and the Law on Entry, Exit, Transit and Residence of Foreigners in Vietnam is being submitted to the National Assembly for consideration. Among them, there are two contents that directly impact the tourism industry: the proposal to regulate the duration of electronic visas from no more than 30 days to no more than 3 months and the duration of granting temporary residence certificates at border gates for people entering under unilateral visa exemption from no more than 15 days to no more than 45 days.
If approved by the National Assembly during the session taking place on May 20, along with a further expansion of the list of visa-exempt countries, the tourism industry expects the new visa policies to be a powerful lever for Vietnam's tourism to accelerate.
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