Vietnam Sees Strongest Tourism Growth in Asia; Malaysia and Cambodia Among Top 10 Source Markets

According to the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism, evaluation indicators from the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UN Tourism) show that Vietnam’s tourism sector continues to climb in global rankings, standing out in the Asia-Pacific region.

As reported in the May 2025 edition of the UN Tourism’s World Tourism Barometer, in the first quarter of 2025, Vietnam emerged as a bright spot with the highest growth in international tourist arrivals in Asia-Pacific, increasing by 30% compared to the same period in 2024.

According to the UN Tourism report, over 300 million international tourist arrivals were recorded globally in Q1 2025 — up more than 14 million compared to the first of quarter 1 2024.

This represents a significant global tourism recovery, despite ongoing geopolitical tensions and high inflation affecting travel and tourism service costs.

Notably, aggregated data from UN Tourism also indicates that in Q1 2025, Vietnam led Asia-Pacific in international visitor growth, with a 30% year-on-year increase, and ranked second in terms of recovery — up 34% compared to the first of quarter 1 2019.

Despite current challenges and a more cautious outlook, UN Tourism has maintained its global tourism growth forecast at 3% to 5% for 2025.

Specifically in June 2025, Vietnam welcomed nearly 1.5 million international visitors — a 17% increase year-on-year. This figure contributed to a total of nearly 10.7 million international arrivals in the first six months of the year, marking a 20.7% rise compared to the same period in 2024, and 25.7% higher than the pre-pandemic period in 2019.

The number of visitors in the first half of 2025 also surpassed the total number recorded for the entire year of 2016 (10 million arrivals).

China continued to be Vietnam’s largest source market in the first half of 2025, with 2.7 million visitors, accounting for 25.6%. South Korea ranked second with 2.2 million visitors, or 20.7%. Together, these two markets contributed 46.3% of the total international arrivals in the past six months.

They were followed by Taiwan (630,000 arrivals), the United States (449,000), and Japan (393,000).

Particularly noteworthy is the continued presence of Malaysia and Cambodia among Vietnam’s top 10 source markets — marking the second consecutive time this year. This reaffirms the strong appeal of Vietnam’s tourism sector among regional travelers.

Malaysia and Cambodia are also two of the ten key markets that Visit Indochina is actively focusing on for development and expansion.

Visit Indochina.