Vietnam collects 9 billion USD from international tourists in the first half of 2026

At the Government’s online conference with localities on the morning of July 4, General Secretary and President To Lam said that the amount of money Vietnamese people spend traveling abroad is “no less generous” than the revenue from international visitors to Vietnam. Therefore, Vietnam’s tourism in the past half year only had a surplus of 950 million USD, compared to a surplus of 480 million USD in 2025, and a deficit of 380 million USD in 2024.

Therefore, General Secretary and President To Lam proposed to further analyze the balance of services and have a strategy to rebalance the tourism industry in the coming years. He suggested that in order to have a higher tourism surplus, Vietnam’s tourism industry needs to upgrade so that foreign tourists come to spend more and Vietnamese people choose more domestic tourism.

According to data from the Department of Statistics (Ministry of Finance), in June, international visitors to Vietnam reached 1.68 million, down 5.7% over the previous month and up 14.7% over the same period last year. In the second quarter, international visitors reached 5.49 million, down 18.8% compared to the first quarter. In the first 6 months of the year, international visitors to Vietnam reached 12.3 million, up 14.9% over the same period last year.

At the conference this morning, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Lam Thi Phuong Thanh said that in the coming time, tourism will be promoted to truly become a key economic sector. The interrelationship between tourism and related industries needs to be developed, shifting thinking from breadth and quantity to depth, quality, high added value associated with products rich in creativity and unique experiences. Vietnam’s tourism industry will target the high-spending and long-stay segment.

“Through understanding the situation and working with a number of localities, we see that tourism has been identified by many localities as a priority area, but the solution is not really strong and there is no synchronous investment,” Minister Thanh said and hopes localities will focus on finding solutions to develop tourism in the area.