HANOI: Vietnam rose seven places from 2024, and 11 from 2019, to rank 52nd among 110 economies in the World Economic Forum (WEF)'s 2026 Travel & Tourism Development Index (TTDI), the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism (VNAT) said.
Its score rose 6.1 per cent from 2024 to 4.15. The index gauges the factors and policies that underpin a sustainable, resilient tourism sector. It does not track performance metrics such as visitor numbers, spending or revenue, but measures the conditions that let a destination attract visitors, deliver services and sustain activity over the long term.
The TTDI is built on five dimensions, 17 pillars and 102 indicators. The dimensions are enabling environment, tourism policy and favourable conditions, infrastructure and services, travel resources, and tourism sustainability.
Indicators roll up into scores for each of the 17 pillars, and the overall TTDI score is the arithmetic mean of those pillar scores. The five dimensions mainly organise and present results.
Indicators are standardised on a scale of 1 to 7, allowing economies to be compared on their level of development and their capacity to create a favourable environment for tourism.
Within Southeast Asia, Vietnam ranked fifth, trailing Singapore (13th), Indonesia (23rd), Malaysia (26th) and Thailand (38th). However, its 6.1 per cent score gain outpaced all four.
Tourism climate improves across key pillars
Notably, seven Vietnamese pillars placed among the world's top performers (1st to 35th), up from four in 2024. Price competitiveness, at seventh, and safety and security, at ninth, ranked highest.
VNAT said price competitiveness gained eight places and safety and security 18, reflecting WEF's favourable view of Vietnam's political-social stability and security amid global volatility. These factors have been central to Vietnam’s appeal to foreign visitors in recent years.
Next came cultural resources (21st), natural resources (22nd), travel demand sustainability (27th), non-leisure resources (30th) and air transport infrastructure (34th).
Compared with the previous rankings, air transport infrastructure gained nine places, ground and port infrastructure 10, cultural resources six, and natural resources four. Environmental sustainability jumped 18 places. Travel demand sustainability made the biggest leap, climbing 24 places to 27th.
Six pillars landed in the upper-middle tier (36th to 70th), including ground and port infrastructure (43rd), workforce and labour market (50th), ICT readiness (58th), business environment (63rd), tourism openness (67th) and health and hygiene (68th).
In all, 13 of Vietnam's 17 pillars ranked from upper-middle to world-leading. The other four fell in the lower-middle and low tiers (71st to 110th), including tourism infrastructure and services, environmental sustainability, travel prioritisation, and the socio-economic impact of tourism.
Vietnam welcomed an estimated 17.7 million international visitors in the first nine months of 2026, up 14.5 per cent year-on-year, maintaining strong growth momentum as the tourism sector expands across major source markets.
According to the latest report available from the National Statistics Office (NSO) on Saturday, this is the highest nine-month figure in recent years.
Foreign arrivals in September alone reached an estimated 1.77 million, down 11.3 per cent from August but up 16.1 per cent year on year. The NSO said the figure was the highest for September in the past five years.
In the third quarter, Vietnam received about 5.4 million international visitors, down 1.1 per cent from the previous quarter but up 13.8 per cent year on year.
Of the third-quarter arrivals, 4.6 million travelled by air, up 13 per cent year-on-year; 806,600 entered by land, up 14.8 per cent; and 34,500 arrived by sea, representing a sharp 271.7 per cent increase year-on-year. — VNS/ANN
