Vietnam is becoming the hottest tourist hotspot in Southeast Asia—and trying to avoid Thailand’s mistakes

Vietnam attracted just over 21 million visitors in 2025, up 20% year over year, and is targeting 1.1 quadrillion dong ($41 billion) in tourism revenue this year. Growth is being supported by visa liberalization, airline expansion, and major infrastructure investment, including more than $830 million for a new Phu Quoc airport and new hotel partnerships with IHG and Hilton. The article is broadly positive for Vietnam’s tourism, hospitality, and infrastructure sectors, though the impact is more sector-specific than market-wide.

Analysis

The key investment implication is not “Vietnam tourism is growing,” but that the country is moving up the value chain of regional travel spend. That shifts the mix from low-ADR backpacker inventory toward higher-margin hotel, aviation, airport, and MICE/medical demand, which should lift revenue per visitor more than headline arrivals imply. The second-order winner is domestic conglomerates with land banks and development execution; they can monetize both room rates and adjacent retail, F&B, and transport throughput before foreign operators fully price in the market.

The infrastructure angle is more important than the leisure angle. New airports, route additions, and visa liberalization create a multi-year capex cycle that benefits constructors, concession operators, and logistics-linked consumer names, but also raises the risk of overbuilding if arrivals normalize after the APEC catalyst passes. The market should distinguish between asset-light hotel managers, which benefit from fee growth and lower balance-sheet risk, and capital-intensive owners, where returns depend on sustained occupancy and rate expansion.

The biggest contrarian risk is that this becomes a one-cycle trade on policy easing and post-pandemic catch-up. If China/South Korea demand softens, or if regional competitors respond with more aggressive visa terms and capacity, Vietnam’s pricing power could fade faster than consensus expects; that would show up first in marginal island and secondary-city projects. A subtler risk is service quality: if the country scales rooms faster than staffing, repeat visitation and higher-spend segments may underdeliver, capping EBITDA margins for local developers despite strong top-line growth.

I would treat this as a 12-24 month thematic trade, not a straight-line compounder. The right expression is to own infrastructure and asset-light hospitality exposure while fading the most levered long-duration tourism developers that need perfect occupancy to justify returns. Near term, the best setup is to buy on pullbacks into macro noise, because the policy/airline/visa tailwinds are already in motion, but to fade any euphoric move that prices in uninterrupted double-digit tourism growth through 2027.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long HLT / IHG over the next 6-12 months: asset-light operators should capture Vietnam growth through management fees and brand penetration with limited capex risk; prefer entries on weakness if the market sells the story as purely cyclical.
• Long infrastructure beneficiaries in Asia-linked construction/concessions, e.g. CTRY/regionals where available, for 12-24 months: airport and tourism-district buildout should sustain order flow, but size modestly because returns depend on project execution and government pacing.
• Pair trade: long Vietnam-exposed hospitality/aviation beneficiaries vs short a basket of high-fixed-cost leisure operators in more mature ASEAN markets over 6-9 months; the relative thesis is higher incremental spend per visitor and faster route/visa expansion.
• Avoid chasing local hotel developers with heavy balance-sheet leverage for now; if you want exposure, use a staged entry only after occupancy and ADR data confirm that secondary destinations are sustaining pricing power beyond the APEC buildout window.
• Set a tactical hedge via short regional travel ETF / long Vietnam proxy only if China outbound travel data rolls over for two consecutive months; that would be the earliest signal that the demand mix is less durable than the policy narrative suggests.