Vietnam’s Medical Tourism Opportunity Is Bigger Than 21 Million Tourists

Vietnam is right to ask why medical tourism remains underdeveloped. But the real opportunity is not converting holidaymakers into patients. It is attracting a new class of high-value international visitor who chooses Vietnam because of its healthcare.

A recent Tuổi Trẻ News article poses an uncomfortable question for Vietnam.

Despite receiving nearly 21 million international visitors in 2025, why has the country failed to turn that extraordinary tourism success into a medical-tourism industry comparable with regional competitors?

The concern is legitimate. The conclusion, however, risks looking at the opportunity from the wrong direction.

Vietnam welcomed approximately 21.2 million foreign visitors in 2025, a record year for international tourism. Yet the Ministry of Health estimates that only around 300,000 foreigners use medical services in Vietnam annually—and importantly, that number includes foreign residents as well as people who travelled specifically for treatment.

Vietnam clearly has an underdeveloped medical-tourism sector.

But 21 million tourists are not 21 million potential medical tourists.

That distinction matters.

A Medical Tourist Is Not Simply a Tourist Who Visits a Doctor

Someone spending five days in Hanoi, taking a cruise through Ha Long Bay or holidaying in Phu Quoc does not automatically become a medical tourist because a hospital, dentist or cosmetic clinic happens to be nearby.

Certainly, some holidaymakers will have dental work, health screening, dermatological treatment or minor procedures while travelling. That is a useful market.

But the medical traveller Vietnam should really be competing for is different.

The journey begins with a healthcare requirement.

A prospective patient researches countries, hospitals, doctors, treatments, costs, recovery requirements and travel arrangements before choosing the destination.

The sequence is:

Healthcare need → Research → Medical assessment → Provider comparison → Patient decision → Travel → Treatment → Recovery → Follow-up.

Tourism comes into that journey, but it does not determine the medical treatment.

That leads to a principle Vietnam should adopt as it develops the industry:

The treatment determines the itinerary. The itinerary must never determine the treatment.

Medical Travellers Are the Elite End of the Tourism Market

This is where the economic potential becomes much more interesting.

A genuine destination medical traveller can represent the elite end of the international visitor market in economic value.

Not because the person is necessarily wealthy, and certainly not because a foreign patient should be charged an inflated price.

Their value comes from the nature of the visit.

Depending upon the procedure and medical advice, a patient undergoing substantial dental reconstruction, elective surgery, fertility treatment, rehabilitation or another planned intervention may need a significantly longer stay than an ordinary holidaymaker. Some treatment pathways can involve stays of three or four weeks; others may require a return visit.

The exact duration must always be determined by the treatment and the patient’s clinical circumstances—not by a tourism package.

But consider the economic consequences when a patient appropriately remains in Vietnam for 21 or 28 days.

There is the medical expenditure itself.

Then there is accommodation, meals, local transportation, airport transfers, interpretation and other services. A spouse, relative or carer may travel with the patient and spend throughout the same period.

And if treatment requires a second stage or later follow-up, the patient may return.

The Vietnamese government is already recognising the importance of attracting higher-spending patients. Current proposals envisage integrated medical-tourism models connecting hospitals with hotels, resorts and travel services, while Hanoi’s planning specifically calls for partnerships between healthcare providers, accommodation businesses and transport operators.

This should go much further.

Hotels and serviced apartments should see medical travellers as a distinctive long-stay market and consider appropriate long-stay rates, flexible meals, laundry, quiet recovery environments, transportation to appointments and accommodation for accompanying family members.

Hospitals and medical-tourism facilitators should be talking with airlines about economical or negotiated travel arrangements where patient volumes justify them.

Treating medical travellers as an elite market should mean providing exceptional value and service—not finding ways to charge them more.

The Problem With the “Golden Goose”

One of the dangers facing medical tourism is the assumption that an international patient is a captive customer.

They are not.

A medical traveller can compare a Vietnamese quotation with Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, India, China—or their home country—from a laptop.

Cost matters.

But so do quality and convenience.

A patient who believes a quotation is inflated because they are foreign can go elsewhere. A patient who cannot establish what is included in a price can go elsewhere. A patient who sends medical records and waits days for an answer can go elsewhere.

This is why price transparency is more important than simply advertising “low-cost healthcare”.

Vietnam does not necessarily need identical prices for every patient.

International-patient services can create genuine additional costs: interpreters, administrative assistance, airport reception, international insurance processing and other support.

But those costs should be visible.

Before travelling, a patient should, wherever reasonably possible, understand the proposed treatment, hospital and specialist, estimated hospital charges, professional fees, anaesthesia, major consumables, expected stay and significant exclusions.

The answer to questionable “tourist pricing” is not necessarily price regulation.

It is transparency.

And Vietnam Will Not Always Be the Cheapest

Another misconception deserves challenging.

Vietnam should not build its medical-tourism identity around the proposition that everything is cheaper in Vietnam.

It isn’t.

For some minor cosmetic, dermatological and outpatient treatments, the savings may be too small to justify international airfare, accommodation and time away from work.

For other procedures—particularly where there is a substantial difference in treatment cost—the economics can look very different.

The question international patients increasingly ask is therefore not simply:

“Where is it cheapest?”

It is:

“Where can I receive appropriate quality treatment at a reasonable cost, with the least difficulty?”

That produces three much more useful words for Vietnam’s medical-tourism strategy:

Quality. Cost. Convenience.

All three matter.

Excellent medicine accompanied by poor communication is not enough.

A cheap procedure accompanied by uncertain standards is not enough.

A luxurious resort cannot compensate for inappropriate treatment.

And a world-class hospital that an international patient cannot discover, contact or navigate easily remains commercially invisible.

Vietnam Already Has More Medical Capability Than Many People Realise

This is another reason the suggestion of “failure” requires qualification.

Vietnam is not starting with an empty healthcare system.

The Ministry of Health reports more than 2,100 hospitals and 105,000 doctors. Vietnamese institutions perform complex procedures including robotic surgery, organ transplantation, cardiovascular intervention, cancer treatment and assisted reproduction, alongside established capabilities in ophthalmology and dentistry.

Vietnamese hospitals are already treating international patients.

The current market includes overseas Vietnamese and patients from Cambodia, Laos, South Korea, Japan, Australia and European countries. Commonly used services include cosmetic dentistry, fertility treatment, aesthetic procedures and health checks.

There are also examples of foreigners deliberately travelling to Vietnam for sophisticated care, including an Australian patient who recently travelled to Hanoi for prostate cancer treatment and selected the provider partly because of prompt surgical access, technology and English-language communication.

The capability exists.

The challenge is making it consistently accessible to someone sitting in Sydney, Singapore, Seoul, London or Los Angeles considering where to receive treatment.

Vietnam’s Diaspora Should Not Be Overlooked

There is another natural market that deserves much greater attention: overseas Vietnamese.

They already possess something that expensive international advertising campaigns struggle to create—a connection with and familiarity with Vietnam.

Current Ministry of Health reporting identifies overseas Vietnamese among the principal groups already using healthcare services in the country.

For members of the diaspora, a medical journey can combine healthcare with family connections, language, culture and an extended stay.

That is a very different proposition from trying to convince a first-time foreign visitor to undergo significant treatment in an unfamiliar country.

The diaspora could become one of the bridges through which Vietnam develops international confidence in its healthcare system.

Packages Are Not the Same as Patient Pathways

Vietnam’s emerging strategy envisages medical-tourism packages combining healthcare, tourism and wellness. There is commercial logic in coordinating these services, and government planning includes pilots linking hospitals, hotels, resorts and travel businesses.

But Vietnam should be careful with the word package.

A hotel stay can be packaged.

Airport transfers can be packaged.

A wellness retreat can often be packaged.

Complex healthcare cannot always be reduced to:

Procedure + five hotel nights + sightseeing tour.

Patients are individuals.

Two people considering the same operation may require different investigations, different treatment and very different recovery periods.

The stronger model is a patient pathway.

The medical assessment comes first. The travel and hospitality arrangements are then constructed around it.

That distinction is fundamental if Vietnam wants to build an international reputation based upon trust rather than simply price.

The Real Infrastructure Is the Patient Journey

Vietnam’s government is considering standards for hospitals serving international patients, multilingual services, international accreditation, digital platforms, insurance arrangements and a national medical-tourism brand. The current Ministry of Health proposal targets 750,000 international medical visitors by 2030.

These are worthwhile ambitions.

But before Vietnam spends heavily telling the world it is a medical-tourism destination, it needs to make the actual journey work.

An international patient should be able to:

Discover → Enquire → Submit medical records → Receive preliminary medical review → Understand the proposed treatment and costs → Compare options → Decide → Travel → Receive treatment → Recover → Return home → Follow up.

If that chain works, the marketing becomes much easier.

If it does not, a national logo and advertising campaign will not fix it.

Look at Supply Chains as Well as Hospitals

There is another issue largely absent from the current public discussion: the cost of providing healthcare itself.

Vietnam cannot compete internationally simply by expecting doctors and hospitals to charge less.

Medical devices, implants, pharmaceuticals and specialised equipment are part of the final treatment price. Imported products, regulatory approval, distribution and procurement can all affect what the patient eventually pays.

Vietnam should therefore examine whether its regulatory and procurement systems allow hospitals appropriate access to safe, internationally accepted medical technologies at competitive prices.

That does not mean lowering safety standards to admit the cheapest product.

It means asking whether regulatory processes can simultaneously protect patients, encourage competition and avoid unnecessary costs.

China’s development of specialised medical zones, including the Boao Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone in Hainan, provides one regional example worth studying—not necessarily copying. Vietnam should examine what can be learned from regulatory experimentation elsewhere while developing safeguards appropriate to its own healthcare system.

This is an area deserving serious policy research of its own.

Vietnam Does Not Need to Become Thailand

Thailand inevitably appears in discussions of Vietnamese medical tourism.

Tuổi Trẻ reports that Thailand attracted around three million international patients and generated nearly US$3 billion in medical revenue, with much larger figures when related healthcare and wellness activity is included.

Vietnam should study Thailand’s experience.

But it does not need to imitate Thailand.

Thailand has spent years developing its international hospital sector and medical-tourism reputation. Vietnam is only now formalising a national strategy.

Vietnam can develop its own proposition around areas where it has demonstrated capability and competitive potential—dentistry, fertility treatment, health screening, ophthalmology, aesthetic medicine, rehabilitation, traditional medicine and selected advanced specialties.

And surrounding all of that is something competitors cannot reproduce:

Vietnam itself.

Its food.

Its culture.

Its hospitality.

Its coastline.

Its cities.

Its wellness traditions.

And an established tourism industry that attracted more than 21 million international arrivals last year.

Those tourists are evidence of Vietnam’s international appeal.

They should not be mistaken for the medical-tourism market itself.

From 21 Million Tourists to Something Much More Valuable

The Tuổi Trẻ article is right about one important thing.

Vietnam is not yet realising the potential of medical tourism.

But the solution is not simply to ask how many of the country’s existing tourists can be persuaded to buy healthcare while they are here.

That undersells the opportunity.

Vietnam should be asking:

How many additional international visitors could choose Vietnam specifically because of its healthcare?

How long would they stay?

Would they bring a partner or family member?

Would they return for further treatment?

Would they recommend Vietnam to others?

And how much economic activity would that generate not only for hospitals, but also for hotels, airlines, restaurants, transport providers, interpreters and the wider tourism economy?

That is why the genuine medical traveller deserves to be considered among the elite of Vietnam’s international visitor market.

Not because that patient should be charged more.

But because a well-served medical traveller can bring something far more valuable than a single hospital bill: a longer stay, additional visitors, repeat travel, international word-of-mouth and new demand that would not otherwise have come to Vietnam.

Vietnam already has the tourism.

It increasingly has the medicine.

What it now needs is the bridge between the two.

And that bridge must begin with the patient.

Editorial Note

This commentary responds to issues raised in Tuổi Trẻ News on 22 September 2026. It does not dispute the need for stronger standards, patient protections or regulation in Vietnamese medical tourism. Rather, it argues that the sector should be developed around the needs and economic value of the destination medical traveller, with patient choice, clinical appropriateness, transparent pricing and continuity of care at its centre.

About the Author

George Adams writes on Vietnam, healthcare, education and regional affairs. He is the founder of Medical Tourism Vietnam and publisher of Hanoi Trading Post. His work on medical tourism advocates a patient-first approach based on informed choice, transparent information and access to appropriate healthcare providers in Vietnam and across Asia.