May marks the 12th monthly decline in international visitors to Vietnam as 576,000 foreigners have visited the country, down 16.4% year-on-year.

Data of the General Statistics Office (GSO) showed that international arrivals in the first five months of this year have gone down by 12.6% year-on-year to over 3.27 million.

Guests from most of Vietnam’s major visitor-generating markets have dropped, except for Japan and Taiwan with modest increases of 5-7%.

Now is the off-peak travel season for inbound tours in Vietnam. However, local travel companies worry about their performance in the coming months as their foreign partners said the situation would not improve anytime soon. 

According to the Vietnam Tourism Association (VITA), the depreciation of some foreign currencies like the euro, yen and Australian dollar against the U.S. dollar have made U.S. dollar-denominated Vietnam tours more expensive. The economic malaise in some major visitor-generating markets for Vietnam is also to blame.    

Therefore, VITA has proposed the Government exempt all international visitors from the visa fee of US$45 from July to December as this would help them save not only the visa fee but also other associated service charges when applying for visas.

The organization has also suggested the Government approve value added tax (VAT) breaks and delay corporate income tax payments for travel enterprises and hotels for six months or one year so that they can have money for promotion programs to attract foreign travelers.

But the Government has yet to approve the proposals and apply unilateral visa exemptions to tourists from more major visitor-generating markets.

Nguyen Van Nen, minister-chairman of the Government Office, told the Government's regular monthly media conference in Hanoi on Wednesday that the Government discussed visa exemptions for travelers from some countries at its recent cabinet meeting but more time would be needed to decide as there were differences over this matter.

Nen said the Government would create favorable conditions for foreign tourists based on relations between Vietnam and their nations. The Prime Minister will issue a directive to remove hindrances in the tourism sector to spur its development.   

In a related development, the Government has approved setting up the Tourism Development Fund to support this sector.

But the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has suggested collecting an accommodation service charge of VND10,000-20,000 per night (45-92 U.S. cents) from international visitors but has yet to detail the collection method.