TRC & Visa policies update March 24th, 2020

Thanks for these informations. I live in Vietnam, but only with tourist visa 3 months... Now, Visa on arrival has been stopped, then how can I do when my current visa will be at the end ? Before, I was practicing visa run or I was travelling in neighbours countries.
Thanks in advance :-)
Laurent

Pay through the nose.

Vietnam doesn't give a f*ck about you as a foreigner. Can you blame them?

Graft and corruption are systemic within Immigration and the visa agents.

Money, money, money.

Money, money ,money....?

Given the current economic disaster that’s crippling world economies,  apart from people living here I don’t think anyone wanting an “extension “ of  vIsa will be an issue for a VERY long time.

There won’t be many people splashing money on overseas Holidays in the foreseeable future.  Overseas holidays will be a distant memory for a lot of people.   Who knows how bad the economic impact will be.

Retired Expats will probably be the only ones here.😳

The big danger for Vietnam tourism will be China.  When China left here, the tourism sector crashed.  Hotels & restaurants started closing.
And now , China know full well how much power & influence they have over Tourism throughout the world , not just here.

They seem to find the money. I’ve seen reports that China have been printing 3 Trillion USD worth of Yuan each year.   You can’t build ghost cities with pocket change.

If & when China return they will hold ALL the cards in tour packages & activities....it will be their way ,at their price point OR no way at all.

China are actually liking this financial Armageddon we are seeing.  They’ve “apparantly “ got the virus behind them.....and are now sitting like a Cat watching a canary getting ready to pounce . 

They’ve got Cambodia & Laos by the balls financially.  All they need now is arguably the best stretch of coastline in SE Asia to have control over.  They don’t need to own it......just economic control.

With the Mekong on life support, rIce & Coffee have tanked, the fish have swam away,  oils finished & Indusrty 4 will decimate the textile & electronics assembly work...University graduates here are working for GRAB, and that’s already the case before the virus came along..........Tourism was the last hope. 

With tourist operators here “on their knees with their hands out”  ( and that’s literally how it’s getting)    Do you really think China will have some compassion for this predicament OR capitalise on it.

Visa extension discussions will be a distant memory then.....they’ll likely have a new boss.😳

I'm in Nha Trang and the decimation of the tourist industry has hit this city hard. All the big hotels, resturants etc are empty. Many thousands of people have lost their jobs. But I can't see tourism returning here for a long, long time. International flights have stopped and until a vaccine is discovered or the virus runs it's course and we have 'herd immunity', I doubt whether tourists will be allowed into the country. This could take years.
China will also be deeply effected by a depression. I doubt whether the typical Chinese tourists will have the money, or even a job to go on holidays. Same with Russians.
Like you say, the only foreingers in Nha Trang will be those who are already here.
I am also hoping that once this reality has been comprehended here in Vietnam, foreigners with their money will be more than welcome and that getting a long term visa will be much easier and less expensive.
But nothing is a safe bet here. The impending economic collapse could create an isolationist mind set.
Cities like Nha Trang will all of its empty massive hotels, hoards of idle taxi drivers, empty city centre, unemployed people, closed businesses, will be a sad place for many of the locals.

Last year more than 18,000,000 people visited Vietnam.
5,800,000 came from China.
4,300,000 came from South Korea.
About a 2,000,000 from Japan and Taiwan together.

Source: Wikipedia

Tourism in Vietnam From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chinese tourists mostly visit neighbouring countries. There has been an increase in some European countries lately but they are not going to North America all that much.
Some European countries don't want so many tourists. the Netherlands and Venice want to cut back.

The world wide economic impact of the Chinese tourist is greatly exaggerated. The stats invariably include trips to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau which is the destination of choice for about half of Chinese tourists. What influence do they gain over these places that they don't already have?

The top 10 destinations for Chinese tourists

    Hong Kong
    Macau
    Taiwan
    Thailand
    Japan
    Vietnam
    South Korea
    Singapore
    USA
    Italy

Source: Traveller, An Australian travel magazine and service provider.
"Explore all our sites covering entertainment, food, lifestyle and parenting"

Top countries for Chinese tourists: The impact of China's tourism on the globe  Michael Gebicki 

"China’s rising wealth has resulted in a huge growth of tourism abroad, making Chinese people the world’s most abundant tourists. In 2017, Chinese tourists made 143m journeys abroad, followed by Germany (92m), the US (87.8m) and the UK (74.2m)."

Source: The Guardian, a UK newspaper 

Global tourism hits record highs - but who goes where on holiday?

Consider that 143m includes Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. The real number of Chinese tourists who actually travel outside of what China considers to be their border would be about 70 or 80m. That's less than Germany. Somewhere between the US and the UK. OTOH those three allies send about 250m tourists abroad, a bit more than China eh?

I suspect the average American, UK or Canadian tourist would spend more per person per day on an overseas trip than five average Chinese, so there's that as well.  It's not just the bodies, it's what the bodies spend.

SteinNebraska wrote:

I suspect the average American, UK or Canadian tourist would spend more per person per day on an overseas trip than five average Chinese, so there's that as well.  It's not just the bodies, it's what the bodies spend.

Apparently their economy is in a shambles too. As many as 80,000,000 unemployed (CNN report), a record number of uni grads joining the workforce. The belt and road is on the shelf while they try to figure how to peddle their wares to a world in recession. Apparently according to news reports today, they consider unemployment the biggest threat to their power. Hence everyone is tasked to fight that. Everything else is on the back burner and their national debt is complicating things. Just printing money for infrastructure and maybe more ghost cities is seen as pretty much the only option causing the remnibi to lose value.

Foreign companies moving out and closing down for reasons. Everybody is talking about how to change the supply chain and even globalization efforts wrt China. 

Printing money never solved anything. Just ask the 70's IIRC. Inflation is low because their domestic economy is suffering from their province and city wide quarantines. Wuhan has more cases. They don't include carriers, that is infected citizens without symptoms in their count of infections. Nobody believes their numbers in any event. They're just all propaganda all the time.

Their economy was in a mess just because of the US trade war, imagine how bad it will be when the rest of west decides what to do about their coronavirus reaction and they choose sanctions?

Canada and the US are publicly re-evaluating the one-China policy. Australia and Europe are making public their attempts to force them to change or hold back official statements about how they handled the virus initially.

Things don't look good for them right now.

I could link all this but anybody reading the news this past week has read this in respectable news and economic news reports

Seasteader wrote:

But nothing is a safe bet here. The impending economic collapse could create an isolationist mind set.
Cities like Nha Trang will all of its empty massive hotels, hoards of idle taxi drivers, empty city centre, unemployed people, closed businesses, will be a sad place for many of the locals.

My guess is that Vietnam will forgo international tourism for a while rather than let in the virus.  Tourism in 2019 was 6% of GDP, up from 4% in prior years.  From your perspective in Nha Trang it may look like 60% but 6% is a pretty low number.  Of that 6% probably at least half is internal tourism, which could be opened up soon.  While there may be regional casualties like Nha Trang, I fully expect that Vietnam could leave external tourism shut down for a while longer.  The rest of the country will soon enough be pumping out t-shirts and basketball shoes.

VietCanada wrote:

The world wide economic impact of the Chinese tourist is greatly exaggerated.

Consider that 143m includes Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. The real number of Chinese tourists who actually travel outside of what China considers to be their border would be about 70 or 80m. That's less than Germany. Somewhere between the US and the UK. OTOH those three allies send about 250m tourists abroad, a bit more than China eh?

That might be true, but if you deduct national tourism from the Chinese numbers, you would have to do same with the other stats as well, if you’re going to compare them. I don’t know about Germany and the UK, I think most of them travel internationally, but that’s probably not the case for Americans.

SteinNebraska wrote:

I suspect the average American, UK or Canadian tourist would spend more per person per day on an overseas trip than five average Chinese, so there's that as well.  It's not just the bodies, it's what the bodies spend.

Most Chinese tourists travel to countries in Asia with zero dollar tours.  Their flights with Chinese airlines and their stay in Chinese-owned hotels are free.  In exchange, they spend very little in local stores and do not use local services.  They only eat and shop from approved merchants owned by Chinese.  The only money they're allowed to spend in non-Chinese shops are to street vendors, which is insignificant.

I would say an average non-Chinese tourist pumps more money into the local economy than 15 average Chinese tourists each day, and that's a conservative guess.

Kurterino wrote:

VietCanada wrote:

The world wide economic impact of the Chinese tourist is greatly exaggerated.

Consider that 143m includes Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. The real number of Chinese tourists who actually travel outside of what China considers to be their border would be about 70 or 80m. That's less than Germany. Somewhere between the US and the UK. OTOH those three allies send about 250m tourists abroad, a bit more than China eh?

That might be true, but if you deduct national tourism from the Chinese numbers, you would have to do same with the other stats as well, if you’re going to compare them. I don’t know about Germany and the UK, I think most of them travel internationally, but that’s probably not the case for Americans.

You should read the article:

"Tourism is on the rise. In 2018 there were a record 1.4bn international tourist arrivals, according to the World Tourism Organization (UNTWO)"

That's the first sentence.

It should also be clear from this number that any one country is just a drop in the bucket where international tourism is concerned. Hardly a basis for world domination as the OP seems to be claiming.

Ontheroad57 wrote:

Visa extension discussions will be a distant memory then.....they’ll likely have a new boss.😳

The VN government is actively encouraging local tourism right now. That will probably help a bit but some industries are going to suffer in this climate. The biggest is probably tourism and entertainment. That's true everywhere not just for China's neighbours.

At least VN and many other countries are trying to mitigate it.

Australia and New Zealand are or were talking about an exclusive tourism tunnel between their countries.

As long as the virus exists tourism and entertainment are not good business options at this time. Afterwards they may be big opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Using it as a threat as China did towards Australia at this time is mind bogglingly obtuse.

Edit: I was going to do a new post but I'll add this thought here.

As China has been responsible for two pandemics in just over a decade, the fact that they weren't open about them and the consequences of that obfuscation it may well be that Chinese tourists will be subjected to a level of scrutiny that might take the fun out of travelling. They may become a non-factor in global tourism without concessions wrt monitoring and even their policing of wet markets.

IMHO this is a legitimate point. We don't know what the fallout will be. But world leaders are talking openly about consequences for China. This would be a pretty mild one considering what they could do.

VietCanada wrote:

Australia and New Zealand are or were talking about an exclusive tourism tunnel between their countries.

I am assuming that this is a set of relaxed regulations that they are calling a virtual tunnel.  After all it is over 2000 KM.

Statista listed that the mainland Chinese spent 277 bil usd in overseas travel in 2018, the US came in a far second at 140 billion, 
Thus exclude the billions they spent purchasing property while travelling ..
In 2009, the  chinese bought 30 billion of property in the US  n 4 - 6 billion of prop each in Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam,  Singapore n Australia (mansion global)
A 2018 report by the thai tourist association found that the typical  Chinese traveller outspent the europeans by 50% on average, that's the reason why the thais are falling head over heals to attract them

Some australian dude here previously commented that the chinese were coming to vietnam on zero dong tours, a likely possibility he could be right would be cos the latter are the biggest buyer of australian goods n services n spent 133 bil in 2017-18 (consumes 30% of aussie exports ) hence have to come to vn on zero dong tours after splurging in oz ..
In fact, the oz economy would really go under if the Chinese stopped buying stuff from them so better not be rascist n hope they are not zero dong shoppers .. ha

zest123 wrote:

Statista listed that the mainland Chinese spent 277 bil usd in overseas travel in 2018, the US came in a far second at 140 billion, 
Thus exclude the billions they spent purchasing property while travelling ..
In 2009, the  chinese bought 30 billion of property in the US  n 4 - 6 billion of prop each in Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam,  Singapore n Australia (mansion global)
A 2018 report by the thai tourist association found that the typical  Chinese traveller outspent the europeans by 50% on average, that's the reason why the thais are falling head over heals to attract them

Some australian dude here previously commented that the chinese were coming to vietnam on zero dong tours, a likely possibility he could be right would be cos the latter are the biggest buyer of australian goods n services n spent 133 bil in 2017-18 (consumes 30% of aussie exports ) hence have to come to vn on zero dong tours after splurging in oz ..
In fact, the oz economy would really go under if the Chinese stopped buying stuff from them so better not be rascist n hope they are not zero dong shoppers .. ha

It's the volume of Chinese  tourists, not what they spend.

Tourists

unfortunate at the end  the  day, the total expenditure will usually be what matters n the nos are hugely significant n unmatched by any other country  however one may like to spin it ...

the worse thing is that less than 20% of the chinese population are going on outbound tours  at the moment so the future nos will be really staggering as more people hop on the bandwagon .. n that's what got countries like thailand hooked ..

in terms of personal expenditure, the most expensive item that anyone can buy in a lifetime are usually houses. ..so when u see people coming over to buy houses while on tour, nothing else can really beat that kind of expenditure ...

zest123 wrote:

Statista listed that the mainland Chinese spent 277 bil usd in overseas travel in 2018, the US came in a far second at 140 billion, 
Thus exclude the billions they spent purchasing property while travelling ..
In 2009, the  chinese bought 30 billion of property in the US  n 4 - 6 billion of prop each in Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam,  Singapore n Australia (mansion global)
A 2018 report by the thai tourist association found that the typical  Chinese traveller outspent the europeans by 50% on average, that's the reason why the thais are falling head over heals to attract them

Some australian dude here previously commented that the chinese were coming to vietnam on zero dong tours, a likely possibility he could be right would be cos the latter are the biggest buyer of australian goods n services n spent 133 bil in 2017-18 (consumes 30% of aussie exports ) hence have to come to vn on zero dong tours after splurging in oz ..
In fact, the oz economy would really go under if the Chinese stopped buying stuff from them so better not be rascist n hope they are not zero dong shoppers .. ha

Well thank you for these numbers. I don’t know the source and haven’t checked myself, because I’m not surprised. A lot of people like to believe a lot of things about the Chinese, and the myth that they don’t spend any money while traveling is one of these things. Interesting numbers...