Laos has no plans to slash visa fees
Laos has no plans to slash visa fees
Laos has no plans to slash the visa fees for foreign tourists but will instead concentrate on providing better facilities for tourists entering the country, officials in charge have stated.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Consular Department D irector General Mr Sisavat Inphachanh told Vientiane Times on Wednesday that different countries have different strategies to attract tourists including cutting visa fees.
“Although we do not have a plan to slash visa fees in Laos, we are focused on offering a number of improved facilities for tourists, including visas on arrival, which are now available at over 20 international border checkpoints,” he said.
Recently, the Vietnamese government announced plans to cut visa fees for several types of international passport holders and overseas Vietnamese next month, in the latest effort to boost the country's foreign arrivals.
Starting November 23, the single-entry visa will cost US$25 instead of the current US$45, whereas the fee for multiple-entry visas with a validity of less than three months will go down from US$95 to US$50, the Vietnamese Ministry of Finance was quoted in Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Tuesday as saying.
Foreigners will still have to pay US$95 for the multi-entry visa with validity between three and six months, and US$135 for between six months and a year.
Meanwhile the fee for a visa valid for between one and two years is US$145, and from two to five years, US$155. The visa fee adjustments are intended to boost tourism, according to the Vietnamese newspaper.
For tourists who enter Vietnam and continue traveling to Laos and Cambodia and then come back to Vietnam to return to their home countries, the visa fee is US$5 instead of US$45 as currently charged.
Currently, Laos grants visa free status to visitors from nine Southeast Asian countries, including Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines as part of Asean cooperation.
Laos also grants visa exemptions to five countries including Japan, the Republic of Korea, Russia, Luxembourg and Switzerland, aiming to attract well-off tourists from these countries.
Tourism officials said Laos is concentrating on tourism campaigns to publicise the country's tourism attractions and amazing traditional culture of the multi-ethnic Lao people to the outside world in parallel with the improvement of infrastructure and other facilities for tourists.
The government also works in partnership with other Asean member countries to jointly promote tourism and link tourism programmes so that tourists can visit several countries in Asean.
As a result, the number of tourist arrivals in Laos reached 4.4 million last fiscal year, an increase of 4.1 percent compared to the figure recorded the previous year, according to the Ministry of Planning and Investment.
Specifically the number of tourists from the Republic of Korea increased by more than 10 percent last fiscal year, compared to the figure recorded the previous year.
