Phu Quoc ranks third globally. Five villages earn UNESCO recognition. Ten eco-hotels set new standards. But can Vietnam sustain this—or will success become its undoing?
Phu Quoc ranked third globally in 2025 for service quality, scenery, beach beauty, and local hospitality—but rapid tourism growth creates both opportunity and risk
Vietnam is doing something genuinely different with tourism. Whether it can hold that course is the question worth asking before you book.
The evidence is real. Phu Quoc ranked third in Condé Nast Traveler’s 2025 Readers’ Choice Awards with a score of 95.51 points, ahead of the Maldives (92.31), Maui (93.35), Bali (89.84), and Phuket (84.62). Ten Vietnamese properties received formal recognition from the Vietnam Authority of National Tourism for environmental excellence in September 2025, evaluated on service quality, product diversity, environmental friendliness, and technology integration. Five Vietnamese villages have earned “Best Tourism Village” designation from UN Tourism, with Lo Lo Chai and Quynh Son awarded the 2025 title following Thai Hai (2022), Tan Hoa (2023), and Tra Que (2024).
These aren’t promotional claims. They’re measurable achievements. The question is whether they represent a new model or the first chapter of a familiar story—the one where success creates pressure, pressure becomes development, and development erodes the very qualities that attracted visitors in the first place.
Why Vietnam’s Approach Matters
As a developing nation, Vietnam faces the choice that defined Southeast Asia’s tourism trajectory. It could pursue aggressive expansion: build aggressively, prioritise short-term revenue, manage environmental consequences later. Thailand and Indonesia took that path. Both now grapple with overtourism, environmental degradation, and destinations that are loved to death.
Vietnam’s official strategy explicitly rejects that model. Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Mai Van Chinh emphasised moving beyond “growth-at-all-costs” mentality to a more balanced, sustainable model of tourism, with the country making significant strides toward greener tourism as it recognises challenges including over-tourism, plastic waste, and ecological damage at iconic destinations like Ha Long Bay, Phu Quoc, Hoi An, and the Mekong Delta.
The difference sits at the policy level. Vietnam hasn’t simply allowed green hotels to emerge organically. It has created formal recognition systems, established criteria, and publicly endorsed sustainability as competitive advantage rather than cost. Criteria for the Best Green Hotel Award included service quality, product diversity, environmental friendliness, promotion of Vietnam’s image, and technology integration, with winners including Ana Mandara Cam Ranh (awarded “Best Eco-Friendly Resort”), Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi (with ASEAN Green Hotel Award recognition), and Hotel de l’Opera Hanoi (featuring energy-saving lighting and Planet 21 sustainable development initiative).
This matters because policy frameworks create space for genuine practice. They signal that environmental responsibility is non-negotiable rather than optional. But frameworks only work if enforcement keeps pace with pressure.
The Evidence: Three Hotel Case Studies
If Vietnam’s sustainable tourism model succeeds anywhere, it’s in its accommodation sector. Here’s what that looks like in practice.
Ana Mandara Cam Ranh Resort exemplifies the principle that environmental responsibility and cultural authenticity reinforce each other. Located in Khanh Hoa Province and inspired by local fishing village culture, it harmonises with rather than dominates its mountainous coastal landscape through recycled materials and local design integration. What makes this interesting isn’t simply the sustainability credentials—it’s that guests experience this as cultural immersion rather than compromise. Energy conservation, water recycling, and organic waste treatment happen invisibly. Visitors focus on what they came for: relaxation in a genuinely beautiful setting.
Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi represents a different model: retrofitting heritage properties for sustainability. This historic hotel didn’t build to green standards from conception. It restored itself to meet rigorous environmental benchmarks whilst maintaining the sophistication guests expect from five-star accommodation. The property received both the ASEAN Green Hotel Award and Hanoi City Green Energy Award for reducing its carbon footprint whilst conserving resources. For conscious travellers, this matters deeply: you’re not choosing between heritage and sustainability. You’re selecting a property that treats preservation of both as non-negotiable.
Salinda Resort on Phu Quoc demonstrates ecological thinking embedded at design conception. Over 80% of its grounds feature multi-layered gardens blending into natural landscape. The resort uses Accoya wood panels and stone walls designed to naturally regulate temperature, reducing energy consumption while using alternative products such as paper cups, cloth bags, and sugarcane bagasse boxes, helping create jobs for local communities and support green economic growth.
The pattern across all ten recognised properties is consistent: they’re competing on values rather than price. They signal to travellers that luxury experiences honouring culture and environment aren’t contradictions. This matters at scale because when conscious travellers choose sustainable properties, they vote for a specific kind of tourism economy.
Vietnam’s awarded eco-hotels such as the Ana Mandara Cam Ranh Resort (pictured) integrate sustainability invisibly—guests experience luxury and environmental responsibility as seamlessly compatible rather than compromised
The Villages: Living Culture or Tourism Performance?
This is where Vietnam’s sustainable tourism model becomes genuinely complicated.
Vietnam has had, for the third time in a row, a representative honoured in the “World’s Best Tourist Villages” category by UN Tourism, with Tra Que Vegetable Village (2024) joining Thai Hai (2022) and Tan Hoa (2023). Each follows UNWTO criteria requiring exceptional natural landscapes, local knowledge, biodiversity, cultural heritage, and local economic activities such as agriculture, forestry, livestock farming, fishing, and gastronomy.
But designation creates tension. Recognition attracts visitors. Visitors create economic incentive. Economic incentive shapes behaviour. The question is whether villages maintain control over this trajectory or whether external pressure reshapes them.
Thai Hai operates at community scale. Located in Thai Nguyen, the village preserves 30 ancient stilt houses and maintains cultural and spiritual life of the Tay ethnic group, with visitors participating in activities including loom weaving, vegetable growing, tea picking, wine making, and traditional music, whilst the village has received numerous awards including 5-star OCOP recognition at national level (2025) and ASEAN Homestay Award. Thousands of visitors arrive monthly, yet the experience remains rooted in actual community life.
The question, though, is whether this remains true as recognition accelerates. Designation itself creates pressure toward commercialisation. The challenge isn’t that tourism destroys these villages. It’s that success changes them in ways both visible and subtle.
Tra Que Vegetable Village demonstrates the principle at more intimate scale. Located 3km from Hoi An Ancient Town, the village charges 35,000 VND entry and offers visitors the chance to participate in actual agricultural work, explore by bicycle or foot, help with farming, and eat food harvested that morning. At this scale, tourism genuinely functions as community life with revenue as additional benefit rather than primary purpose.
But Tra Que won UNESCO designation in 2024. Before that, visitor numbers were manageable. Post-recognition, what happens as thousands of international tourists arrive monthly seeking “authentic agricultural experience”? Does farming rhythm adjust to tourism schedule, or tourism to farming? The answer determines whether this remains authentic or becomes performance.
Tan Hoa reveals tourism’s double edge. Recognised in 2023, the village in Quang Binh province experienced a catastrophic flood in 2010 with water levels rising 12 metres, submerging most homes, after which residents adapted by constructing floating houses on rafts (2011) followed by fully floating homes (2012), now functioning as homestays. Visitors experience genuine community resilience. But the floating houses exist partly because tourism created economic incentive to adapt rather than relocate. Community agency or tourism reshaping community priorities? Both are true simultaneously.
Lo Lo Chai and Quynh Son, both receiving 2025 recognition, follow similar patterns. Lo Lo Chai focuses on waste management innovation whilst Quynh Son emphasises preservation of weaving and farming traditions, blending culture with environmental stewardship through homestays, traditional workshops, and organic farming participation. Both are rooted in actual practice.
Yet both received recognition only recently. The pressure toward commercialisation hasn’t yet arrived. It will. Whether villages manage that trajectory or it manages them determines what happens next.
Thai Hai village preserves authentic Tay culture through community-controlled tourism, but international recognition creates inevitable pressure toward change
The Numbers: Success Creating Pressure
In the first nine months of 2025, international arrivals to Phu Quoc reached over 1.2 million—a 65.8% increase year-on-year—with total tourism revenue hitting approximately 31.1 trillion VND (£860 million or USD 1.1 billion), up 90.1% year-on-year.
Ten years ago, reaching Phu Quoc required patience and flexibility. Today, international flights arrive daily. The island is now ready with an all-encompassing tourism ecosystem featuring world-class entertainment, exclusive art performances, and luxury resort infrastructure on par with global standards, offering 30-day visa-free entry for all international visitors.
This is economically positive. It’s also environmentally stressful. Water systems, sewage treatment, beach capacity—all face mounting pressure. Vietnam’s authorities acknowledge this. Vietnam’s commitment to sustainable tourism offers a model for how the sector can adapt as the world continues to face challenges of climate change, inequality, and environmental degradation.
But acknowledgment and execution are different things. The real test comes now: can infrastructure and commitment keep pace with demand as the island becomes mainstream?
This is the tension defining Vietnam’s tourism moment. It’s not that eco-conscious properties don’t exist. They do. It’s that success creates pressure—to build more hotels, attract more visitors, generate more revenue—in exactly the ways that erode what made the destination appealing in the first place.
What Makes Vietnam Different (For Now)
Unlike Thailand and Indonesia at similar tourism development stages, Vietnam has explicit state policy prioritising sustainable development. The Vietnam Tourism Awards 2025 will recognise 115 businesses and organisations across 11 categories, with special emphasis on innovation and sustainability, including best eco-tourism destination and best cultural tourism experience awards, serving as recognition of high standards and innovative approaches taken by businesses to drive Vietnam’s tourism growth.
This policy framework creates space for genuine sustainable tourism. It’s not perfect—government policy doesn’t guarantee enforcement—but it’s genuinely different from the “build and monetise” approach that dominated Southeast Asia for decades.
The other difference is market positioning. Vietnam isn’t competing with Thailand on beach experience or Bali on affordability. It’s competing on values: conscious travellers willing to pay premium prices for genuinely sustainable experiences. That market segment exists. It’s affluent enough to fund genuine environmental and community protection. And it’s still small enough that quality can be maintained.
For now.
The Accessibility Question
Vietnam’s sustainable tourism model necessarily serves a particular class of traveller. By focusing development on affluent visitors seeking conscious luxury, Vietnam limits who benefits.
A traveller spending £200 nightly supports local communities differently than one spending £40. This isn’t inherently problematic—luxury tourism generates sufficient revenue per visitor that less overall tourism is needed to fund community development and environmental protection. Economically, sustainable tourism at premium prices makes more sense than budget tourism at scale.
But it’s worth acknowledging the trade-off: Vietnam’s model explicitly prices out budget travellers. That’s a choice, not an accident. And it shapes who gets to experience Vietnam’s cultural heritage.
Interestingly, this connects to broader Southeast Asian tourism tensions. Budget backpacker culture has created documented problems across the region—issues Vietnam’s approach attempts to avoid by focusing on conscious luxury. But by pricing out budget travellers, Vietnam creates a different question: does tourism become exclusively available to the wealthy, and do cultural experiences become luxury commodities rather than shared heritage?
This isn’t a flaw in Vietnam’s model. It’s a trade-off worth understanding before you visit.
Phu Quoc: The Test Case
Phu Quoc’s achievement matters not as triumph but as test. The island’s ranking reflects travellers’ satisfaction across multiple criteria: from service quality, scenery, beach beauty and unique cuisine to the warmth of local hospitality.
But here’s what that ranking obscures: Phu Quoc ranked third before mass recognition. The recognition itself changes what the island becomes.
Ten years ago, reaching Phu Quoc required effort. Infrastructure was basic. Visitor numbers were manageable. Local communities still controlled tourism rhythm. The island’s appeal derived partly from these constraints.
Now the island is world-class. This is success. It’s also the beginning of Phu Quoc’s transformation from hidden gem into mainstream destination. The island’s commitment to quality infrastructure and cultural preservation might slow this process. It won’t stop it. Success creates visibility. Visibility creates pressure. Pressure erodes the conditions that created success.
This is the paradox worth contemplating before booking. Phu Quoc genuinely offers something rare: world-class infrastructure, sophisticated entertainment, unspoilt character, and visa-free entry. But the window for experiencing it in this form is narrowing. The island’s success is beginning to undermine the conditions that created it.
Why Vietnam’s Moment Matters Globally
Vietnam’s sustainable tourism experiment matters beyond Vietnam because it’s testing whether Southeast Asia can learn from past mistakes.
Thailand, Bali, Cambodia all contain cautionary tales. Each destination achieved international success, which attracted investment, which accelerated development, which attracted mass tourism, which degraded the very qualities that attracted visitors initially. Environmental damage, cultural erosion, community displacement—the trajectory is predictable.
Vietnam appears to be attempting something different: managed growth focused on quality rather than quantity, community agency rather than investor-driven development, environmental responsibility embedded into policy rather than added as afterthought.
If Vietnam sustains this model—if Phu Quoc remains sophisticated rather than becoming commercialised, if UNESCO villages retain community agency rather than becoming performance venues, if the ten eco-hotels remain genuinely sustainable rather than becoming greenwashed—then Vietnam demonstrates an alternative path. Other destinations would study it. Other developing nations would follow it.
But that’s a significant series of “ifs.” Each depends on maintaining policy commitment, enforcing environmental standards, prioritising community voices, and resisting investor pressure as tourism scales. All of that is possible. None of it is guaranteed.
What This Means for Conscious Travellers
If you’re seeking luxury that aligns with your values—if you want to know where your money goes and what positive change it creates—Vietnam currently offers something genuinely compelling.
The ten recognised eco-hotels demonstrate that environmental responsibility meets guest expectations. Properties like Sofitel Legend show that historic properties can retrofit sustainability standards without sacrificing sophistication. Newer properties like Salinda demonstrate that ecological thinking from design conception doesn’t compromise luxury.
The UNESCO villages offer genuine cultural immersion rooted in actual community life. They’re working communities benefiting economically from tourism without being consumed by it. At current scale, homestays remain small-scale and visitor numbers are managed.
Phu Quoc combines world-class infrastructure with unspoilt character in ways that are becoming rare in Southeast Asia. The 30-day visa-free entry removes bureaucratic friction. The commitment to quality over quantity remains visible in planning and policy.
But—and this is crucial—book soon. Not from FOMO, but from recognition that this moment is temporary. The forces that create mass tourism everywhere are already at work here. Vietnam’s policy framework and market positioning have slowed those forces. They haven’t stopped them.
The hotels won’t disappear. The villages won’t vanish. But they will change. The next 18 months will determine whether that change is managed and gradual, or accelerated and irreversible.
Practical Information for Booking
Getting There: Phu Quoc International Airport connects directly to major hubs including Bangkok, Singapore, Seoul, and Kuala Lumpur, making the island accessible for travellers across Asia and Europe. Most international visitors fly into Ho Chi Minh City, then travel north. For access to northern villages, fly into Hanoi.
Visa Requirements: Vietnam grants awards to 130 villages globally through UN Tourism, and most international visitors qualify for visa-free entry, with e-visa options available through Vietnam’s official portal. Citizens of 30 countries enjoy 30-day visa-free entry. Others can apply for e-visas through Vietnam’s official immigration portal.
Best Time to Visit: November through April offers optimal weather—warm without excessive heat or rain. This also happens to be peak tourism season, which means larger crowds and higher prices. May through October carries risk of typhoons and intense heat, but fewer tourists and lower costs.
Budget Expectations:
- Eco-certified hotels: £80-200+ per night
- UNESCO village homestays: £30-60 per night
- Meals at local restaurants: £2-5
- UNESCO village entry fees: 35,000-40,000 VND (approximately £0.90-1.12)
Booking Recommendations: Choose accommodations from properties recognised in Vietnam Authority of National Tourism’s Best Green Hotel Award. For village visits, book through official community tourism organisations rather than international tour operators when possible. The difference in local economic benefit is substantial.
For deeper context on tourism tensions across Southeast Asia, explore our coverage of budget backpacker culture challenges, responsible elephant tourism in Thailand, and marine conservation leadership in Vietnam’s coastal communities.
Vietnam’s natural beauty and cultural heritage are genuine—the question now is whether conscious tourism choices can preserve them for future generations
Credit: Vietnam National Tourism Authority or landscape photography archive
Looking Forward
Vietnam’s tourism sector arrives at a crucial juncture. The model is working. Visitors are coming. Revenue is flowing. Communities are benefiting. Infrastructure is developing.
The next few years will determine whether Vietnam maintains its emerging commitment to quality, community agency, and environmental responsibility—or whether success creates pressure toward the well-worn path of destinations that sacrifice authenticity for volume.
The outcome isn’t predetermined. Policy commitment, investor discipline, community voice, and conscious traveller choices will all shape what Vietnam becomes.
For now, the experiment continues. Vietnam’s sustainable tourism model exists. The question is whether it can survive its own success.
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