Vietnam’s tourism star is on the rise

Thailand may be fully in the spotlight where Southeast Asian tourism is concerned, its starring role in Season 3 of The White Lotus has supercharged vacationers’ (already high) interest.

- Lebawit Lily Girma

But there's a neighbouring destination that's one-upping it in terms of growth: Vietnam now ranks as the third-mostvisited country in Southeast Asia, with 17.5 million international arrivals in 2024, edging ahead of Singapore. It follows Malaysia, which claims 25 million visitors, and Thailand, at the top spot with 35 million.

Those figures make Vietnam the regional leader in terms of its tourism recovery pace, a metric that continues to track-five years after the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the world - how much tourism business each nation has recouped from its 2019 baseline. Vietnam has regained 98% of that business, outpacing all of its neighbours, including Thailand (87.5%) and Singapore (86%). And by all accounts, Vietnam's popularity is continuing to soar: Nearly 4 million international tourists visited in January and February, representing an increase of 30.2% year-over-year, according to recently published figures from the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism.