Tourism extends momentum

Thriving with many attractive activities

In 2024, HCM City continued to lead the country in visitor arrivals, revenue and contributions to the national tourism industry. Total estimated revenue rose 18.8% year on year to VND190 trillion. Domestic tourist arrivals climbed 8.6% to 38 million while international visitor arrivals surged 20% to 6 million.

2024 also marked a special milestone for the tourism industry when HCM City was honored in important categories: "Asia's Leading Business Travel Destination 2024" and Asia's Leading Festival & Event Destination 2024 (honored by the World Travel Awards), the World's 20 Best Cities for Food (voted by Time Out), and Top 10 best places to visit in Vietnam in 2025 (voted by Lonely Planet). 2024 was also the 5th consecutive year that the city maintained its position as "Asia's Leading MICE Destination". HCM City has therefore reaffirmed its role as a leading economic - cultural - tourism center of Vietnam and the region.

In the first quarter of 2025, the city's tourism industry continued to grow, with total revenue reaching VND56,662 billion, up 26.7% year on year. The city welcomed over 1.6 million international visitors, 18.2% more than a year-ago period.

According to the HCM City Department of Tourism, to achieve this result, in 2024, the city adopted many consistent solutions like building a tourism development strategy to 2030 and carrying out a smart tourism development project with specific plans. HCM City also issued a handbook that introduced 42 locally distinctive tourism products, organized survey programs and developed new tourism products such as night tourism, waterway tourism, medical tourism and rural tourism.

Many familiar tourism products have become tourism brands of the city like the tour to Saigon Special Forces, the tour to the War Remnants Museum, the tour to the relic headquarters of the City People's Council and the City People's Committee, Sac Forest - Can Gio tour, River Festival, Thieng Lieng community tourism destination - Phase 2 and Warzone Moon experience program in Cu Chi Tunnels.

In addition, HCM City has regularly organized attractive tourism stimulus programs like discounts on room rates for night flights, discounts on tours for visitors participating in tourism fairs, and vouchers for visitors buying many tours or package tours.

At the same time, tourism promotion and advertising has been strengthened by sending representatives to attend international tourism fairs in the United States, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Laos and other nations, as well as its major cultural events such as Tet Festival, Ao Dai Festival and International Travel Expo (ITE-HCMC).

In particular, with the “20 years of vibrant journey” theme associated with the program message “Welcome to Ho Chi Minh City”, the city successfully hosted the 20th HCM City Tourism Festival, making a strong impression on many domestic and foreign travel businesses.

Strengthening connectivity, promoting growth target

Driven by the high growth momentum from 2024, in 2025, HCM City aims to welcome 8.5 million international visitors, an increase of more than 40% from the previous year, and about 45 million domestic visitors. Total tourism revenue was estimated at VND260 trillion, up 37% year on year.

HCM City will continue to reinforce cooperation and develop inter-regional tourism, and link with 13 Mekong Delta provinces, the Southeast region, Hanoi and Central and Northwest key economic regions. This will help boost tourism cooperation and promote typical tourism products.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Anh Hoa, Director of the HCM City Department of Tourism, said: The tourism development cooperation and connection program has produced positive outcomes. In the past five years, giant travel businesses of HCM City have brought about 7.5 million visitors to the Mekong Delta. This joint activity also attracted about 2.5 million tourists from Southwestern provinces to the city.

Moreover, to introduce local destinations and typical tourism products, the Department of Tourism has coordinated with businesses, the Thu Duc City People's Committee and 21 districts to further develop joint local tourism products. Many associated tourism products have created beautiful impressions like Go Mon (District 12 - Go Vap - Hoc Mon - Cu Chi), a corner of green Saigon (District 4, District 7 and Nha Be district) and Saigon Special Forces: Legendary bunkers (District 1, 3 and 10).

The department continued to focus on communications celebrating the 50th anniversary of Victory Day and the National Reunification, announce the identity and communication message of the tourism industry in 2025 as well as 50 iconic tourist destinations in the city.

In April 2025, the department organized the Ho Chi Minh City Tourism Festival themed "Convergence and Shine", demonstrating the readiness, dynamism and creativity of the city's tourism industry in developing products, improving service quality and meeting higher and more diverse needs of tourists.

The tourism industry is determined to further improve the quality and diversify products, focus on communications and advertising of destinations and tourism brands, promote tourism stimulus and utilize digital applications in tourism, thus helping build, boost and further spread the image of Ho Chi Minh City as an “attractive - secure - vibrant destination" and raising the level of tourism in the country in general.