Culture · 2026-10-21
Hoi An counted nearly five million visits, and about a third bought a ticket
At a 17 October conference, UNESCO’s Hanoi office said Hoi An had nearly five million visitors in 2025 and 1.71 million ticket sales, about 35 percent. In 2024 the share was about 40 percent.
Figures presented 17 October 2026, for 2024 and 2025.
The streets are full. The ticket window is not. At a conference on 17 October, organised by Da Nang’s Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Phạm Thị Thanh Hương of the UNESCO Office in Vietnam said Hoi An received around 4.4 million visitors in 2024, of whom 1.78 million bought tickets, about 40 percent. In 2025, she said, visits rose to nearly five million while ticket sales fell to 1.71 million, about 35 percent. Her point was that people were using the heritage landscape without paying into its upkeep. The Da Nang Tourism Association said the products on offer still circle the same few things: the old streets, floating lanterns, basket boats, lantern making, and cycling, with less in the way of longer cultural work, performance, or anything that would make a night worth staying for.
The conservation centre’s director, Phạm Phú Ngọc, put numbers on the town itself. The protected area is 130 hectares, with a 30-hectare core holding 1,175 heritage sites, more than 80 percent of them privately or collectively owned. From 2012 through July 2026 the centre recorded 19.2 million ticketed visits and more than 2 trillion đồng in ticket revenue. Hương said the ancient town had just over 3,000 residents in 2023, that around 40 percent of original homeowners had moved away, and that in 2024 only about 20 to 30 percent of heritage properties still had people living in them. The centre’s answer, in the same meeting, is to keep the old town as the core and to send visits out to Kim Bong, Thanh Ha, Tra Que, Cam Thanh, and Cu Lao Cham, and to add named programmes around tuồng, the old prison at night, and the coconut groves. The photograph is the street people walk whether or not they buy the ticket.
