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| Tourists enjoy exploring HCM City by Vespa. — VNA/VNS Photo |
HCM CITY — HCM City’s tourism sector is set to sharpen its focus on quality-led growth in 2026, putting visitor experience at the centre, urban cultural identity at the core, and innovation and digital transformation as key growth drivers.
Tourism development is being steered towards a multi-product, multi-space model that closely links the city centre with riverside, coastal and ecological forest areas, within the broader vision of a post-merger mega-city.
Recalibrating growth quality
The municipal tourism sector is renewing its development approach, prioritising the creation of distinctive, in-depth tourism products, accelerating digital transformation, and building a high-quality workforce. At the same time, it is stepping up regional connectivity and promoting green, sustainable tourism to meet the requirements of a new development phase.
In 2025, HCM City welcomed more than 8.55 million international visitors and around 4.56 million domestic tourists, generating tourism revenue of VNĐ278 trillion (over US$10.5 billion). These results provide a solid springboard for shaping tourism growth in 2026 and the years ahead.
A key highlight was the launch of the HCM City Global Traveller Barometer, a system that monitors and forecasts major source markets. This makes HCM City the first locality in Việt Nam to develop a regularly updated international visitor database with clear measurement indicators, helping modernise tourism promotion and marketing.
Trần Thế Dũng, General Director of Vietluxtour Travel JSC, said that beyond targeting the right markets and designing promotion programmes, the city needs concrete and sustained activities throughout implementation. This would allow travel firms and service providers to integrate initiatives into their products and better attract tourists.
Vũ Thị Thanh Hiền, Director of the Kim Đô Hotel, expressed her hope for further expansion of visa policies, which will give accommodation and infrastructure operators greater flexibility and help create more favourable conditions for visitors to experience the city’s signature destinations and services.
Since the administrative merger, most tourism and travel businesses in HCM City have actively rolled out inner-city discovery programmes while developing inter-provincial tour routes to tap the strengths of each destination. Visitors coming for investment and business promotion can now combine trips with experiences in Bình Dương, a major industrial hub, and extend their journeys to Vũng Tàu for high-end resort tourism.
To reinforce tourism’s role as a key economic sector and elevate the city’s profile regionally and internationally, priority measures include strengthening regional linkages alongside expanding global supply chains, with the aim of forming integrated tour routes and product chains that add value to visitor experiences.
Unlocking new development spaces
According to Phạm Huy Bình, Director of the HCM City Department of Tourism, the National Assembly’s adoption of Resolution No. 260/2025/QH15, amending Resolution No. 98/2023/QH15 on special mechanisms and policies for the city’s development, has opened up new opportunities for tourism. The revised framework allows for stronger policy actions to attract visitors.
Notably, in December, the municipal People’s Council passed Resolution No. 62/2025/NQ-HDND on support mechanisms to attract MICE tourists, helping lay a foundation for sustainable tourism growth in 2026 and beyond.
On this basis, the city has set ambitious targets for 2026, aiming to welcome 11 million international visitors and 50 million domestic tourists, with total tourism revenue projected at VNĐ330 trillion.
To achieve these goals, the sector will revise and supplement its tourism development master plan to 2030, focusing on high-value, high-impact products such as cultural and historical tourism, night-time tourism, MICE tourism, waterway tourism and medical tourism.
Comprehensive digital transformation will continue, moving towards a smart tourism ecosystem that links state management data with business operations. This is expected to improve governance efficiency, support enterprises and deliver more personalised visitor experiences.
Nguyễn Thị Khánh, Chairwoman of the HCM City Tourism Association, said 2026 presents encouraging signals that are generating growth momentum for businesses. However, to fully capitalise on these opportunities, travel companies and tourism service providers need to develop more attractive products and aim to significantly extend visitors’ length of stay in the city.
Alongside efforts by state management agencies, individual enterprises must also invest in building a professional tourism supply chain, particularly skilled human resources, to meet rising demand in the coming years, she noted, adding that the association will continue to support businesses, advocate sustainable tourism development and work closely with authorities to shape practical and business-friendly policies. — VNA/VNS
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