The government recently made changes to a visa exemption program.
The program, which grants a 15-day visa exemption for citizens from Russia, Japan, South Korea, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Belarus, started on January 1, 2015, and is supposed to end on December 31, 2019.
On December 12, the government reached an agreement to extend the program for another three years, making its new expiration date December 31, 2022, Dan Tri reports. The new law is applicable to all passport types and entry purposes, as long as they’re legal.
According to Hanoi Moi, before making the decision, the Tourism Advisory Board suggested that extending the visa exemption program for these countries will help Vietnam attract more than one million international visitors per year, as the new extension could motivate tourists from these eight countries to visit Vietnam.
Indeed, figures announced back in July this year by the Vietnam General Statistics Office found that South Korean tourists accounted for the second-highest percentage of international tourists in Vietnam in the first six months of 2019, with 2,078,602 visitors. These numbers are followed by Japan, with over 455,000 visits. Russia is also considered one of the important tourist markets for Vietnam, with over 600,000 tourists in 2018.
