Majority of Vietnamese choosing the safety of domestic travel destinations

Majority of Vietnamese choosing the safety of domestic travel destinations

Since the pandemic, Vietnamese travellers have had to call off travel plans and had to find alternative outlets for their wanderlust. According to a Visa survey, the research showed the unmistakable mark of the pandemic, with as many as 76 per cent of Vietnamese planning to travel for leisure within the country, far more than the 38 per cent planning overseas trips.

Accordingly, there has been a spike in online travel as Vietnamese travellers viewed more travel-related photos and videos, filling out their bucket lists. More than half (53 per cent) of respondents watched YouTube travel videos and 40 per cent took to travel sites on social media as an alternative, and as many as 38 per cent took a virtual tour online.

“The pandemic has given rise to new and exciting trends, and the biggest changes were experienced in the travel industry,” said Dang Tuyet Dung, country manager for Visa Vietnam and Laos. “It will remain the central theme for the travel industry. Success and failure will ride on how well businesses can accommodate travellers’ pandemic-related needs and wants. We hope the survey findings will provide them with the necessary insights to find success in the new normal. Visa is here to enable businesses and customers with safe, convenient, and fast payment experience.”

The disparity remained for work-related travel (60 per cent domestic travel versus 37 per cent overseas travel). The pandemic has had a significant impact on all aspects of travel, with health and safety dominant in all considerations, from destination to means of transport.

Travel plans hinge predominantly on how the pandemic plays out, as the disease outbreak accounts for the top three factors that will make one feel comfortable travelling. The stability of the situation at the destination was the top factor for 63 per cent of respondents, followed by being vaccinated (48 per cent) and global cases going down (40 per cent).

“Domestic destinations fit better for most Vietnamese travellers, with a strong preference for weekend getaways and short holidays,” said Dung. “Almost twice as many Vietnamese travellers opt to travel domestically, to places that can best accommodate their new priorities. Businesses can capitalise on these trends by ensuring safety and comfort in all aspects of their offerings, including payments. The pandemic has spurred digital and contactless payment adoption among all consumer groups and made it a basic expectation.”

Being an exclusive partnership between two or more countries that have demonstrated considerable success in containing and combating the pandemic to re-establish connections and allow people to travel freely without needing to undergo quarantine on arrival, travel bubbles elicit only moderate interest among Vietnamese respondents with over half (52 per cent) saying they were keen to travel within a bubble but not in the immediate future despite the benefits they could bring through the controlled reopening of borders and industries.

As a particular consequence of the pandemic, people are rediscovering their immediate surroundings, giving rise to the growing trend of staycations in their own city. Around a third of respondents said they would be planning, booking, or having a staycation as soon as possible if there were no longer any government restrictions. Thirty per cent would also visit local attractions.

The Visa Asia-Pacific Voice of the Consumer Insight survey was conducted by Green Shoots Radar for Visa in June 2021 across 14 markets and involved 8,400 people.