Booking.com Surveyed 1,016 Vietnamese Travellers About 2025 — The Key Findings

Booking.com's annual Travel Predictions 2025 — a 27,713-respondent survey across 33 countries and territories — included 1,016 Vietnamese travellers. The Vietnam cut, as summarised through local industry coverage in January 2025, gives one of the clearest pictures published anywhere of what Vietnamese domestic and outbound demand looks like in the post-pandemic stabilisation phase.

This matters even if you're an international visitor: Vietnamese domestic tourists are 110+ million visitors per year (versus 21.2 million international), so their preferences drive where new hotels get built, what amenities they include, and which regions get infrastructure upgrades. The Booking.com findings are a 2–3-year leading indicator for the kind of trip you'll be able to take as a visitor.

What the survey found — headline Vietnam numbers

Theme	% of Vietnamese respondents	Interpretation
Willing to spend on memorable trips	44%	Experience-led spending remains strong
Prioritising experience-optimised spending	83%	Nearly universal preference for value-over-cost
Planning to be more budget-conscious	65%	Budget caution rises — and coexists with the above
Interested in nighttime destinations (noctourism)	74%	New category with high buy-in
Want stargazing / Milky Way trips	85%	Low-light-pollution regions in demand
Plan to limit travel under harsh sunlight (UV)	76%	Climate-adaptive scheduling emerging
Boomers funding adult children's trips	88% (of Boomers)	Multi-gen support structures strong
Boomers prioritising experience over inheritance	37% (of Boomers)	Generational spending shift underway
Visiting thrift stores while travelling	53%	Second-hand/vintage normalised as travel activity
Have bought second-hand items while travelling	82%	Near-universal among engaged travellers
Male respondents seeking "escape" retreats	49%	"Men-only retreat" segment emerging
Women supporting partners' men-only retreats	56%	Social acceptance of the format

The survey release date (November 28, 2024) and the 1,016-person Vietnamese sample make this the largest publicly reported 2025-cycle survey of Vietnamese traveller attitudes we know of.

What this means — six trends worth watching

1. The "budget-conscious yet experience-first" paradox

83% prioritising experience-optimised spend alongside 65% planning greater budget consciousness is the same pattern global Booking.com surveys have picked up since 2023. What it means in practice:

• Travellers are willing to spend meaningful money, but they want the spend to land on moments that feel memorable (a private cooking class, a specific cruise cabin, a quiet mountain homestay).
• They're cutting corners on the plainly fungible parts — car rental brands, generic chain hotels, standard tour packages.

For travel operators in Vietnam, this has translated into better small-group experiences (cooking classes, private Ninh Binh boat tours, Ha Giang motorbike tours with local hosts) and worse high-volume standard bus-tour products. Both trends have been visible in recent review data on independent review sites.

2. Noctourism — a new category Vietnam is well-positioned for

74% interested in nighttime experiences and 85% wanting stargazing is striking. Vietnam has natural advantages here:

• Low-light-pollution regions — Mui Ne's dunes, the Central Highlands (Kon Tum, Buon Ma Thuot), the Ha Giang plateau, Phu Quoc's east coast, and Cat Ba Island's interior are all dark-sky adjacent.
• Night market culture already exists — Hoi An, Hanoi, and Phu Quoc have well-developed night-market tourism that doesn't require special infrastructure.
• Overnight cruises and homestays function as de facto noctourism products — overnight on Ha Long Bay or a Mekong homestay both deliver nighttime-experience value at scale.

Expect new products through 2025–2026: purpose-built stargazing lodges in Mui Ne or the Central Highlands, night safaris around Cat Tien National Park, upgraded overnight experiences on cruise boats.

3. Multi-generational travel is the biggest structural opportunity

88% of Vietnamese Boomers fund their adult children's travel, and 37% would rather spend on experiences than save for inheritance. That's not a marginal data point — it's a generational wealth-transfer through tourism. It also explains why Vietnamese domestic destinations keep upgrading family-friendly infrastructure (connecting rooms, multi-generational suites, family pool access) while Western-style couples-only boutique properties grow more slowly.

For international visitors planning family trips with elderly parents or grandkids: Vietnam is, pragmatically, a well-equipped multi-gen destination. Family-room availability, elevator access, and age-appropriate programming are more consistent than in many peer Southeast Asian destinations.

4. Thrifting is a legitimate travel category in Vietnam

53% of Vietnamese travellers visit thrift stores during trips — a higher share than most global markets in the same survey. Vietnamese cities have well-developed vintage-clothing and second-hand markets:

• Hanoi — Nga Tu So area, Chua Boc markets, and the secondhand corridor around Hang Dieu street
• Ho Chi Minh City — Saigon Square, Nga Ba Phu Cam corridor, District 3 and District 10 vintage stores
• Da Nang & Hoi An — a growing vintage market tied to the young creative scene
• Da Lat — pine-town weekend vintage markets popular with weekend Hanoi/HCMC visitors

This isn't a headline tourist activity for international visitors, but it's genuinely part of the local travel culture. For slow travellers with more than a week in one city, it's a context-rich afternoon.

5. Men-only retreats will show up in wellness resort pricing

Numbers: 49% of Vietnamese men want retreat-style trips; 56% of women support their partners attending. Supply-side, this will manifest as:

• Da Lat and Sapa retreat lodges packaging men-focused wellness programs (breathwork, silent hiking, functional fitness)
• Ninh Binh and Phu Quoc wellness resorts launching male-specific track options
• Urban retreat products (weekend wellness in HCMC) targeting the same segment

If you're a visitor booking a wellness stay in 2026, expect an expanded list of gender-specific programming options relative to 2024.

6. UV-conscious scheduling is new

76% of Vietnamese travellers plan to limit harsh-sunlight exposure during trips. This translates into demand for:

• Morning-heavy itineraries (6am sunrise activities, lunch-break indoor programming, late afternoon resumption)
• Northern-Vietnam or Central Highlands destinations during the hottest months (April–August) instead of southern beach resorts
• Shade-protected activities (cave tours, UNESCO old-town walks, indoor cooking classes)

As a visitor, this works in your favour: hotels increasingly offer morning-activity packages, guides are used to earlier start times, and the cultural expectation of heat-avoidance means nobody looks at you strangely if you want an 8am walking tour in August.

Limitations & caveats

• Industry survey, not peer-reviewed research. Booking.com has commercial interests in findings that suggest premium demand and new-category interest. The 1,016-person Vietnamese sample is reasonable, but it's a branded panel, not a random-sample population survey.
• Self-reported intent, not behaviour. "I would spend on memorable trips" isn't the same as "I did spend on memorable trips." Actual 2025 booking data, once publicly available, may show meaningfully lower follow-through than the expressed intent.
• Vietnamese domestic and outbound blended. Some questions apply to Vietnamese travelling within Vietnam, some to Vietnamese travelling abroad. The dataset doesn't always cleanly split.
• The findings are Vietnam-resident perspectives, not Western-visitor ones. Applying trends to inbound tourism requires inference. Where this article makes that inference (e.g., "new stargazing infrastructure will emerge in Mui Ne"), it's our read — not a Booking.com finding.
• Sample likely skews urban and digitally-engaged. Booking.com's platform reach is strongest in Hanoi and HCMC, so rural Vietnamese perspectives are probably underweighted in the dataset.

Sources & further reading

• Primary source: AHA Vietnam — Top Travel Trends for 2025: Vietnamese and Global Tourist Insights from Booking.com (January 16, 2025) — Vietnam-specific summary of Booking.com's Travel Predictions 2025 data.
• Booking.com — Travel Predictions 2025 (global findings) — the global version of the same survey.

Related on this site:

• Vietnam 2025 arrivals record — the international-visitor side of the picture
• Solo female travel safety research — another dataset on traveller behaviour
• Best time to visit Vietnam — how UV and climate-adaptive scheduling work in practice