By Dr. Phạm Hà – Founding President & CEO, LuxGroup®
In a recent speech, Prime Minister Lê Minh Hưng raised a profound question about the quality of growth in Vietnam’s tourism industry: if international visitors arrive on foreign airlines, stay in foreign-owned hotels, dine in foreign restaurant chains, shop in foreign retail systems, travel on foreign-operated tours, and are guided by foreign tour leaders, then how much real value does Vietnam actually retain?
This is not merely a question for tourism. It is a question for the entire Vietnamese economy as the country targets tourism contributing 14–15% of GDP by 2030.
On the surface, Vietnam’s tourism growth appears highly impressive. In 2025, the country welcomed approximately 22–23 million international visitors, nearly returning to its historic pre-pandemic peak. The target for 2026 is 25 million arrivals, with a longer-term ambition of 35 million visitors by 2030.
Yet behind those numbers lies a much larger issue: the quality of growth.
Around 80% of Vietnam’s international arrivals currently come from Northeast Asia — particularly China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. These are critical source markets that sustain airlines, hotels, and tourism services.
However, this also reveals how dependent Vietnam remains on nearby regional markets with relatively moderate spending levels and higher vulnerability to economic and geopolitical fluctuations. Meanwhile, long-haul travelers from Europe, North America, and Australia — segments that typically generate higher spending and longer stays — remain underdeveloped relative to Vietnam’s enormous potential.
This is the difference between “growth by volume” and “growth by value.”
Tourism growth cannot be measured solely by arrival numbers. It must also be measured by how much added value remains within the domestic economy. If most tourism revenue continues flowing outward through international ownership chains, Vietnam will remain positioned at the lowest end of the global value chain.
This is the moment to rethink tourism not merely as a service industry for receiving visitors, but as a high-value economic sector and a long-term national development strategy.
From Selling Resources to Selling Experiences
For many years, Vietnam’s tourism industry expanded primarily through quantity. We became accustomed to celebrating international arrivals, flight frequencies, hotel occupancy rates, and room inventory.
But this model is gradually reaching its productivity ceiling.
Average visitor spending in Vietnam remains lower than many neighboring countries. Length of stay is relatively short. Value creation per journey remains limited.
In other words, Vietnam has been selling resources more than experiences.
One of the industry’s largest bottlenecks today lies in experiential products. Many destinations still offer repetitive tourism models: similar hotels, identical city tours, interchangeable itineraries, and limited differentiation.
As a result, competition is still driven largely by price rather than value.
Meanwhile, the post-pandemic traveler has fundamentally changed. Today’s visitors no longer seek crowded and inexpensive journeys. They seek personalization, cultural depth, authenticity, privacy, and emotional connection.
They want to live like locals, eat like locals, understand local culture, and return home with meaningful memories rather than just photographs.
This shift is transforming global tourism from “mass tourism” into “high-value tourism.”
Luxury, too, must be redefined.
Luxury today is no longer marble lobbies and chandeliers alone. Luxury is time, privacy, authenticity, personalization, and emotional resonance.
Luxury can be a quiet dinner cruise along the Saigon River. A slow voyage through Lan Ha Bay. A cultural journey where heritage, art, cuisine, and storytelling create unforgettable experiences.
That is why more countries are investing heavily in experiential travel, wellness tourism, cruise tourism, cultural tourism, and immersive luxury experiences.
Vietnam cannot stand outside this transformation.
Rivers and Seas: Vietnam’s Untapped Economic Frontage
Vietnam possesses more than 3,260 kilometers of coastline, thousands of rivers, and a river-based civilization shaped over thousands of years.
Yet paradoxically, river and maritime tourism remain underdeveloped.
Today, nearly 70% of Vietnam’s waterway activities are still focused on transportation or low-value tourism products. Meanwhile, global cruise tourism is one of the highest-value segments of the tourism economy, generating significant spillover effects across aviation, logistics, F&B, retail, cultural industries, and waterfront real estate.
Around the world, iconic rivers serve as the economic frontage of major cities.
Paris has the Seine. London has the Thames. Washington D.C. has the Potomac beside the White House. Bangkok has the Chao Phraya. Shanghai has the Huangpu River.
Vietnam has the Red River and the Saigon River — waterways deeply connected to the country’s urban history, commerce, and cultural identity.
Yet Vietnam has not fully transformed these rivers into world-class economic, cultural, and tourism spaces.
Ho Chi Minh City itself was born from ports, wharves, and boats. It is fundamentally a river city. However, tourism port infrastructure remains fragmented, underdeveloped, and constrained by outdated regulatory frameworks.
Businesses seeking to develop innovative tourism products still face significant challenges involving licensing, docking infrastructure, urban waterway management, and institutional barriers.
Most importantly, despite the presence of many international cruise operators in Vietnam, the country still lacks a strong Vietnamese-flagged cruise line capable of representing Vietnam’s tourism brand on the global cruise tourism map.
Without a major strategic shift, Vietnam risks remaining outside one of the highest-value segments of the global tourism economy.
Amiral Cruises and the Vision of a New Tourism Ecosystem
This is why the launch of Amiral Cruises for Presidents® carries significance far beyond a conventional business project.
Launching on the 115th anniversary of Nguyễn Tất Thành’s departure from Nhà Rồng Wharf in 1911, Amiral seeks not only to tell the story of the Saigon River, but also the story of a modern, sophisticated, culturally rich, and globally connected Vietnam.
The concept of “slow travel in a fast city” reflects a new vision of urban tourism built around quiet luxury, cultural depth, and emotional experiences.
This is not mass tourism.
It is tourism rooted in memory, culture, and the art of living.
But projects like these cannot succeed through private-sector effort alone.
Vietnam urgently needs a breakthrough in tourism governance and institutional reform.
A New Resolution for Vietnam’s Tourism Economy
In my view, Vietnam now needs a new national resolution for tourism development in a new era.
A resolution focused not merely on promotion or visitor numbers, but on growth quality, value creation, and national competitiveness.
Tourism should be recognized as an integrated economic ecosystem capable of driving aviation, logistics, urban development, cultural industries, technology, retail, F&B, and the creative economy.
Vietnam must address critical bottlenecks involving visa policies, tourism ports, infrastructure, human capital, digital transformation, and green growth.
The country also needs stronger national champions capable of building globally recognized Vietnamese tourism brands.
Most importantly, Vietnam needs a clearer tourism brand narrative for the future: greener, more digital, more refined, and more culturally distinctive.
Because in an increasingly globalized world, destinations are becoming more alike.
Only one thing cannot be replicated: culture.
“Luxury is Culture – Delivering Happiness.”
Culture should not merely be treated as a tourism resource. It must become a strategic national core within the global experience economy.
By 2045, Vietnam can absolutely become Asia’s leading experiential tourism powerhouse.
But achieving that ambition requires a profound transformation: from administration to enablement; from quantity to value; from short-term thinking to long-term national vision; and from low-cost tourism to high-value tourism.
The true value of tourism does not lie in visitor numbers alone.
Its true value lies in the ability to generate high added value, strengthen national branding, and ensure that the world remembers Vietnam as a country of identity, cultural depth, and a story powerful enough to inspire humanity.
