Vietnam Hotels Are Filling Faster Than Thailand’s as Travellers Reroute

Vietnam’s hotels are heading into the year-end peak with more guests and higher rates than a year ago, while hotels in Thailand’s beach resort of Pattaya say they still cannot see who is coming. The gap between the two neighbours is now showing up in bookings as well as in arrivals data.

Two markets moving in opposite directions

Vietnam received 19,535,396 international visitors in the first ten months of 2026, up 13.8% on the same period last year, according to the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism. October alone brought about 1.85 million.

Thailand still receives more foreign visitors in absolute terms, but its total is going the other way. The Ministry of Tourism and Sports counted 26.1 million foreign arrivals between 1 January and 7 November, 4.71% fewer than in 2025.

The contrast is sharpest in the hotels themselves. In Vietnam, demand is growing faster than new rooms can open. In parts of Thailand, owners face too many rooms for the guests they have.

Vietnam: demand running ahead of supply

Room demand in Vietnam rose 14.1% in the first five months of 2026, while room supply grew just 2.8%, according to data from analytics firm CoStar as reported by Ariyana. With demand rising about five times as fast as supply, hotels have been able to raise prices without losing guests.

CoStar put average occupancy at 63.9% for the year to date, against 58.4% for the whole of 2025. The average daily rate reached US124.02,upfromUS110.57. Because that period includes Lunar New Year and the international peak, the full-year figures are likely to come in lower, but both measures are moving in the same direction.

The growth is not even. Luxury and upper-upscale hotels led, while midscale and economy hotels averaged 44.3% occupancy and fell on last year, according to the same data. Industry tracker Asia Hotelier’s breakdown of Vietnam’s hotel market shows the split by segment and region, and how much of the build-out is concentrated at the top end.

The visitor mix has changed too. Europe sent 3.22 million visitors in January to October, up 51.5%, and Russia alone sent 1.25 million, two and a half times last year’s figure. South Korea, the second-largest market, fell 6.3%. Longer-haul guests tend to stay longer at beach resorts, which helps markets such as Nha Trang and Phu Quoc.

Thailand: Pattaya enters high season blind

In Thailand, the mood among resort operators is cautious. On 4 November, Thanet Supornsahasrungsi, president of the Chonburi Tourism Federation, said Pattaya operators had not yet seen the advance bookings they normally see two to three months before the high season.

He blamed airfares that he said had risen 30–40%, linked to conflict in the Middle East, which has pushed up fuel costs and disrupted the Gulf connections many Europeans use to reach Thailand. He also named Vietnam as a growing competitor, putting the cost of a trip there at about 20–30% below Thailand.

Chinese tour groups are the other worry. The Association of Thai Travel Agents said in late October that Chinese group bookings were more than 30% below last year after a Chinese embassy safety advisory, and that more groups were staying in Bangkok rather than travelling on to Pattaya.

The pressure extends beyond one city. The Thai Hotels Association’s September survey of 113 hotels, run with the Bank of Thailand, found average occupancy of 55%, with more than half of respondents expecting fourth-quarter revenue to fall. The association said four- and five-star hotels were seeing healthier forward bookings than lower-rated properties, and that visitors from Southeast Asian neighbours were down about 20%.

Kasikorn Research Center reported in October that 148 hotel and accommodation businesses registered closures in the first nine months of the year, up 42%. It estimates Thailand now has about 876,000 rooms, 11.7% more than in 2019, while foreign arrivals remain well below pre-pandemic levels. It expects average room rates to slip about 0.8% this year.

There is one bright spot on Pattaya’s calendar. Tomorrowland’s first Southeast Asian edition runs from 11 to 13 December at Wisdom Valley, and the Thai Hotels Association’s eastern chapter has reported a sharp rise in bookings around those dates.

What the next six months look like

For Vietnam, the question is whether new rooms arrive fast enough to cool rates. CoStar counts 38,354 rooms under construction, about 94% of them upscale or luxury. October to March is Vietnam’s international peak, so pressure on rates is likely to hold through the first quarter of 2027, before more of that pipeline opens.

The government’s target of 25 million international arrivals for 2026 now looks hard to reach. It would need about 5.46 million visitors in November and December, far above recent monthly levels. Hotels can do well without hitting it, but budgets built on the target carry risk.

For Thailand, a late-booking season is not necessarily a lost one. Travellers facing higher fares often wait longer before they commit. But it shifts the risk onto hotels, which must decide on staffing and rates before they can see demand. Lower-star hotels, which depend most on Chinese groups and regional visitors, are the most exposed.

The broader shift is one of price and momentum. With fares high and budgets tight, many travellers are comparing destinations more closely, and for now Vietnam is winning more of those comparisons.