According to Mr. Nguyen Van Tuan, General Director of the General Department of Tourism, this is a breakthrough step, one of the solutions demonstrating the Government's strong direction to create conditions for tourism development. Currently, visa issuance faces many difficulties when the problem is not how much tourists have to pay but the inconvenience they have to endure during the visa application process, especially the travel time and costs for this can be many times larger than the visa fee. Issuing electronic visas will solve this bottleneck.
Issuing electronic visas will reduce the burden of administrative procedures, costs, and travel time for tourists. Photo: Zing News
The electronic visa will be processed within 3 days and the visa is valid for 30 days, the electronic visa market is almost unlimited. This will help to cut out intermediary steps, reduce costs, and increase the number of visitors to Vietnam.
Regarding the issue of communication to let international tourists know about e-visas, Mr. Nguyen Van Tuan said that the tourism industry will take advantage of all means of communication such as posting on the website, notifying embassies, informing international travel companies to bring tourists to Vietnam... In the current strong trend of information technology, the pilot issuance of e-visas will be spread quickly and immediately come into life. However, the tourism industry still expects Vietnam to have more favorable policies because even when Vietnam has issued e-visas, the level of competition and attracting international tourists cannot be compared with countries in the region that have opened their doors to welcome tourists with visa exemption for citizens of many countries in the world. For example: Thailand exempts visas for 58 countries, Malaysia exempts visas for 158 countries, the Philippines exempts visas for 168 countries, Indonesia exempts visas for 169 countries... That means the main international tourist markets of countries in the region are mostly exempted from visas, there are no more barriers.
The General Department of Tourism believes that this new policy of Vietnam will quickly come into effect, contributing to attracting more international tourists to Vietnam in the coming time.
