It has been announced on May 3rd,
2018 that visa exemption policy for 5 Western European countries has been
extended as part of the Vietnam immigration policy to attract tourists to
Vietnam. At the same time, the Government has decided to increase the exemption
period from one year to three years.
Accordingly, the Government has a high consensus
and the Prime Minister has decided to continue the visa exemption for five
Western European countries, including England, France, Germany, Spain and
Italy. As previous regulation, the visa exemption will be expired at the end of
June 2018. The exemption period has also increased from one year to three
years.
Visa policy is considered to be an extension of
the tourism industry because Vietnam is a country has strict visa policies,
with only visa exemption for citizens of 24 countries, much less than other
countries in the region.
For example, Indonesia exempts visas from 168
countries, Malaysia 162 countries, Singapore or the Philippines 159 countries,
Thailand 57 countries. Besides that, these countries apply the policy of
issuing visas at the border and electronic visas.
Western Europe is considered a high-paying
group. Statistics show that the first visa exemption year (2015) has 720
thousand guests. In 2016, the number of visitors increased 16%, turnover
reached 202 million.
In 2017, Western European visitors reached 1.5
million people, contributing to the record of the first-time Vietnam reaching
12.9 million international visitors.
According to many experts, if visas for these
countries are not renewed, tourism industry of Vietnam will lose 20% of its
visitors from large markets with a loss of several hundred million USD.
However, losses will not stop there, as guests may form a habit of not coming
to Vietnam.
This new immigration regulation will start from
July 1st, 2018.
0 nhận xét:
Đăng nhận xét