Vietnamese prefer cash to credit cards when traveling abroad

The report, titled "Vietnam Outbound Travel Trends 2019," released Monday by tourism development consulting firm Outbox Consulting, also found that only 0.5 percent of respondents last year used traveler’s checks for overseas travel.

The reports said younger travelers prefer to make cash payments, while older ones go for cashless transactions.

Almost half (49.9 percent) of respondents born between 1980 and 1999 said they typically use cash for payments while traveling abroad. Meanwhile, 58.8 percent of respondents born in 1970 and earlier said card payment was their preferred option.

The survey polled around 1,053 Vietnamese citizens aged 20-50 who traveled abroad over the past 12 months.

Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Singapore and China are the five most visited outbound destinations by Vietnamese travelers. 52 percent of Vietnamese tourists made solo travels abroad while 38 percent choose tour packages.

According to the report, free, independent Vietnamese travelers were likely to spend VND5-10 million ($215-430) on each overseas trip, while those buying tour packages were willing to spend VND10-20 million on a trip.

The report said that leading factors in choosing a travel destination was expenditure (60.1 percent), good scenery (53.1 percent), safety (47.9 percent), visa procedures (43.5 percent), and the average time spent overseas (40.7 percent).

Increasing numbers of Vietnamese people have been going abroad in recent years. Last year, 8.6 million Vietnamese people traveled abroad, up 15 percent from a year ago.

According to Mastercard, Vietnam has the second fastest growing outbound market in the Asia Pacific region, after Myanmar, with projected annual growth of 9.5 percent between 2016 and 2021.

Industry insiders said that as more Vietnamese join the middle class, they are increasingly looking outward for travel destinations. A World Bank report in 2017 said the country is seeing an increasing number of people, estimated at 1.5 million each year, join the ranks of the middle and upper classes.

A report by global market research firm Euromonitor in 2017 said outbound trips from Vietnam grew at an annual rate of 10-15 percent a year in the 2012-2017 period.