However, to truly become a leading economic sector, as set out in the Politburo’s Resolution No. 08-NQ/TW dated January 16, 2017, Vietnam’s tourism industry must strive to overcome numerous barriers and challenges.

In 2024, tourism emerged as a bright spot in Vietnam’s economic landscape, achieving impressive results with significant growth compared to 2023. The country welcomed approximately 17.5 million international tourists (a 38.9% increase), 110 million domestic visitors (a 1.6% increase), and total tourism revenue reached an estimated 840 trillion VND (a 23.8% increase). Notably, Vietnam continued to receive accolades from the World Travel Awards as “Asia’s Leading Destination”, “Asia’s Leading Heritage Destination”, and “Asia’s Leading Nature Destination”.

The remarkable achievements of Vietnam’s “smokeless industry” in economic development and national image promotion over the past year provide hope for stronger breakthroughs in the future. However, despite moving forward quickly, Vietnam has yet to match the pace of other regional countries, particularly Singapore and Thailand.

According to Pham Van Thuy, Deputy Director of the National Tourism Administration, a crucial factor for tourism development lies in groundbreaking efforts to streamline processes and amend and improve legal frameworks. Currently, procedures, mechanisms, and policies related to tourism development remain cumbersome, involving lengthy processes. Moreover, state management has struggled to keep up with the realities of emerging tourism types, such as adventure sports tourism and agro-tourism in rural areas.

Inter-sectoral and inter-regional cooperation remains inconsistent and insufficiently integrated. While many localities with tourism potential lack clear development strategies, some with limited potential aim to make tourism a leading economic sector, resulting in scattered investments with low efficiency and wastefulness. Furthermore, Vietnam’s tourism products are often repetitive, service quality remains subpar, investment resources for tourism development are inadequate, and funding for promotion and marketing is limited—failing to create strong competitive advantages.

Additionally, Vietnam’s tourism environment still faces challenges, many tourist sites are exploited spontaneously without proper planning or management, and issues like “zero-dollar tours” and illegal tour guides tarnish the country’s reputation and destination image.

As reported by Le Thanh Liem, Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, in 2024, the Ministry conducted 20 inspection delegations at various establishments. Separately, 14 tourism departments inspected and sanctioned 404 organisations and individuals for violations, with fines totalling over 2.5 billion VND. This highlights widespread legal noncompliance in the tourism sector, which must be urgently addressed.

From a business perspective, Nguyen Quoc Ky, Chairman of Vietravel’s Board of Directors, noted that the post-COVID-19 world has become “a different world.” Competition between countries extends beyond promotion and marketing to encompass national policies and strengths. It is time for Vietnam to focus on enhancing policy competitiveness to provide a solid foundation for economic growth.

Reviewing the limitations of the Tourism Law to amend and resolve difficulties for businesses is essential. Given that only 45% of the workforce directly engaged in tourism has specialised training, 35% come from other fields, and 20% remain untrained, Nguyen Quoc Ky emphasised the need for significant investment in human resource development to prevent Vietnam’s tourism from lagging behind competitors.

Dr Nguyen Manh Hung, Deputy Director of the Social Department of the Party Central Committee’s Economic Commission, stressed the importance of creating an open legal environment to support and encourage businesses to drive tourism development. Simultaneously, mechanisms and policies should foster the establishment of large enterprises with access to capital and technology. Digital transformation in tourism should be expedited and synchronised across all levels, sectors, localities, and businesses, alongside further visa policy improvements to attract international visitors to Vietnam.

Under the National Tourism Development Plan for the 2021–2030 period, with a vision to 2045, approved by the Prime Minister on June 13, 2024, Vietnam’s tourism sector aims to welcome 25–28 million international visitors and 130 million domestic tourists by 2025, contributing 8–9% of GDP.

To realise this goal and make tourism a truly leading economic sector, Nguyen Trung Khanh, Director General of the National Tourism Administration, emphasised the need for comprehensive solutions.

Close and synchronised cooperation among ministries, sectors, localities, businesses, and communities is essential. Priority policies for tourism infrastructure development are required to establish large-scale, world-class destinations capable of competing globally. Stronger promotion and marketing efforts, combining traditional methods and digital platforms, must be implemented. Legal documents on public and private investment must be revised.

Effective implementation of these measures will pave the way for investors to create competitive tourism products, affirming Vietnam’s position on the global tourism map.