Vietnam visa exemption for five Western European countries to be extended to three years

The policy of visa exemption for five Western European countries has been extended. Besides, the local authority has decided to increase from one to three-year validity of this policy.

The information of Vietnam visa exemption has been confirmed by Minister – Chairman of the office of the government Mai Tien Dung at the press conference on May 3^rd.

Accordingly, Vietnamese Prime Minister has agreed to extend visa exemption for five Western European countries to unblock bottle-necks of tourism including UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italia of which could not enjoy this exemption after June 2018. Furthermore, the duration of visa exemption is increased from one to three years and come into effect from July 1^st 2018.

In fact, 168 countries are enjoying visa exemption to Indonesia, 162 countries to Malaysia, and it is 159 countries for both Philippines and Singapore. Even the neighbor country – Thailand, the authorities allow 57 countries to visit their country without visa. On the other hand, all the countries are applying the e-visa and getting visa at borders.

The group from Western European countries are ranked at the top countries for spending. According to the research, in the first year of this policy’s effective (2015), there were 720,000 visitors to Vietnam. In 2016, the number of visitors from these countries increased 16%, with the turnover reaching USD 202 million.

In 2017, the number of people from Western European countries reached 1.5 million which contributed to Vietnam tourism’ record, achieving 12.9 million foreign visitors at the first time.

According to the experts, what if the visa exemption for the five countries had not been extended, Vietnam could have lost 20% of visitors from these big markets with the loss up to hundreds of millions USD. However, the loss would not totally stop as it could take Vietnam out of the visitors’ travel habits.