Ho Chi Minh City has written MICE financial support into law — the first jurisdiction in Vietnam to do so. Resolution 62 turns destination marketing into a standing, budgeted entitlement that runs to 2030, and it changes how a group's destination and its support eligibility should be planned together.

For years, Vietnamese cities competed for incentive and conference traffic with goodwill: a welcome desk, a gift, a press photo. Useful, but discretionary and unpredictable. Resolution 62/2025/NQ-HĐND changes the category. Passed by the Ho Chi Minh City People's Council on 10 December 2025 and effective from 20 December 2025 through 31 December 2030, it is the first MICE-support policy in the country enacted as legislation rather than issued as a short-term administrative gesture. Paired with Da Nang's lower-threshold 2026 promotion program, it gives planners two distinct, documentable levers — and one real reason to decide destination and support eligibility in the same breath.

Why "codified" is the part that matters

The headline figures are modest. The structural change is not. Resolution 62 draws on the special budget mechanism granted to Ho Chi Minh City under National Assembly Resolution 98/2023/QH15, which lets the city set support levels beyond standard national norms. Because the policy sits in a People's Council resolution with a fixed five-year horizon, it is stable and forecastable in a way a seasonal promotion never is. A planner quoting a 2028 program can count on the same framework that applied in 2026. That predictability — not the cash — is what makes it usable in a proposal.

Ho Chi Minh City: the four-component package

Support is targeted, not spread thin. A program qualifies when it brings 100+ participants, stays 3+ nights in Ho Chi Minh City, and includes a sightseeing component of at least 2 days. The beneficiary is the travel company or event organizer that brings the group — not the end client. Support is progressive: larger delegations draw the higher percentage in each band.

The four components cap at VND 51 million per group, roughly US$2,000 (at ~25,400 VND/USD). The performance and gift elements carry a deliberate cultural bias — traditional Vietnamese art forms and OCOP (local specialty) products are prioritised, which folds destination character into the welcome rather than bolting it on. The first group processed under the policy was a roughly 890-delegate Indonesian incentive program in May 2026, an early read on which source markets the mechanism is built to attract.

Da Nang: lower thresholds, in-kind support

Da Nang runs a different instrument — the "Elevating Your MICE Experience" promotion program, active 1 January to 31 December 2026. It carries no published cash grant; support is in kind: airport welcome, gifts, event-organizing consultation, and media connection. What sets it apart is reach. Qualifying thresholds fall to 70 participants for domestic groups and 30 for international groups — the lowest in Vietnam.

The 2026 cycle adds two levers aimed at retention rather than acquisition: business recognition (an organizer's name and logo carried on the city MICE portal, with free promotional placement for 6–12 months) and a repeat-group track that designates returning programs as "Loyal MICE Partner" with experience vouchers and partner pricing. For an operator running a recurring annual incentive, that compounding visibility outweighs any one-off subsidy.

The threshold gap is the real planning insight

Read the two programs side by side and a decision rule appears. A 40-participant international incentive group qualifies for support in Da Nang and falls below the line in Ho Chi Minh City. For the 30-to-90 band — a large share of regional reward traffic — destination choice and support eligibility move together. A mid-size group that would draw nothing in the south becomes a recognised, supported program in the centre. That is a routing consideration, not a footnote.

What the policy does not include

English-language coverage has blurred this, so it is worth stating plainly. Resolution 62 is the defined four-component financial package above — tickets, venue rental, welcome performance, and gifts. It does not codify airport fast-track or priority immigration lanes. Those are arranged separately, program by program, and depend on group profile and timing; they are not a standing entitlement. A planner who promises a client "guaranteed immigration priority under the new HCMC policy" is promising something the resolution does not contain.

How a group actually claims it

Eligibility is straightforward; the registration is not, because it runs through Vietnamese-language documentation and city tourism channels on local timelines. The work is in assessing a program against each city's criteria, filing the registration correctly, and sequencing the support claim alongside venue, hotel, and movement holds so nothing is left to the post-delivery scramble. That is the part a DMC absorbs on the agent's behalf — the support becomes a line built into the program design, invisible to the end client, credited to the agent's brand.

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