Ho Chi Minh City has put another firm marker on Asia’s travel-trade map, with the 20th Ho Chi Minh City International Travel Expo ITE HCMC 2026 closing as the biggest edition in the event’s history.
Held from 27 to 29 August 2026 at the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Centre (SECC), the three-day event attracted 47,960 visitors and participants across its on-site and online activities. More importantly for an industry that ultimately lives or dies by business written rather than brochures collected, the expo generated more than 21,000 B2B meetings between international buyers and exhibitors.
For an event celebrating its 20th edition, those are more than birthday-cake numbers. They point to serious commercial intent.
Held under the theme “Vibrant Connections – Global Destinations”, ITE HCMC 2026 brought together tourism authorities, buyers, sellers, airlines, MICE specialists, multinational companies, media and content creators.
Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee directed the expo. The Vietnam National Authority of Tourism and the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism jointly organised it.
And after two decades, the event appears to have found considerably more than its sea legs.
Record numbers and business to match
Official post-event figures show just how far ITE HCMC has travelled since its beginnings in 2005.
This year, 309 international senior buyers, media representatives, content creators and international media partners from 32 countries and territories attended.
More than 520 exhibitors and tourism brands occupied 410 booths, while more than 50 leading travel, MICE and multinational organisations participated.
International travel companies included TUI Deutschland, DERTOUR, Intrepid Travel, Flight Centre Travel Group, Luxury Escapes, Trip.com, GetYourGuide and Uniworld Boutique River Cruises.
The business-travel and events sector was also well represented, with names including American Express Global Business Travel, BCD Meetings & Events and HelmsBriscoe among participants.
That mix is important.
Vietnam is no longer simply placing attractive destination photographs on exhibition walls and hoping the world takes notice. ITE HCMC is becoming a serious marketplace where distribution, contracting, MICE, technology, sustainability, and destination development meet under one roof.
The number that really matters: 21,000 meetings
Travel exhibitions understandably enjoy announcing big attendance figures.
But visitor numbers alone do not fill aircraft seats, hotel rooms or tour coaches.
The more revealing figure from ITE HCMC 2026 is the 21,000-plus B2B meetings between international buyers and exhibitors.
That is where glossy brochures can become contracts, handshakes can become itineraries, and an interesting destination can become a product in a travel agency or tour operator’s system.
For Vietnamese tourism businesses seeking overseas distribution, the hosted-buyer model provides direct access to international decision-makers without requiring them to chase those same buyers across several continents.
Domestic participation was also substantial. Thirty-four Vietnamese provinces and cities took part, widening the range of destinations and tourism products presented to overseas buyers.
For three days, SECC effectively became a tourism trading floor.
And Ho Chi Minh City, hardly a place famous for moving at a leisurely pace, appeared perfectly comfortable with the tempo.
MICE, AI and sustainability move centre stage
ITE HCMC 2026 was not confined to exhibition stands and packed appointment diaries.
The professional program featured 15 forums, conferences and specialist seminars, with 26 international speakers and 25 Vietnamese speakers and experts.
More than 1,100 people attended in person, while a further 8,500 watched online.
Subjects included MICE tourism, destination branding, sustainable tourism, artificial intelligence, technology, medical tourism, innovation and international market links.
A centrepiece was the High-Level Tourism Forum, “MICE Tourism in the New Era: Sustainability – Connectivity – Opportunity”.
Deputy Prime Minister Pham Thi Thanh Tra and more than 400 government, tourism, and business delegates attended the forum. Discussions ranged from sustainability and technology to green-event practices, market data and ways to improve Vietnam’s competitiveness as a MICE destination.
For the travel industry, the message is reasonably clear.
Meetings and events are no longer judged simply by the number of delegates walking through a convention-centre door.
Buyers increasingly consider sustainability, technology, local economic value, infrastructure and the quality of the surrounding destination.
Vietnam wants a larger share of that market, and the agenda in Ho Chi Minh City showed MICE is being treated as a strategic tourism sector rather than an attractive side order.
Tourism diplomacy joins the trade floor
Some of the expo’s most significant activity took place beyond the traditional buyer-and-seller format.
Ho Chi Minh City simultaneously hosted three Mekong subregion tourism ministerial meetings CLV, ACMECS and CLMV together with their respective Senior Officials’ Meetings.
It was the first time Ho Chi Minh City had hosted ministerial-level meetings from all three regional tourism cooperation mechanisms at the same time.
Discussions covered stronger destination links, sustainable tourism development, market cooperation and future regional partnerships.
That adds another dimension to ITE HCMC.
It is increasingly not only a place where travel products are bought and sold. It is also becoming a meeting point for regional policy discussions that could influence the way travellers move through the Mekong region in years to come.
Ho Chi Minh City leaders also held meetings with organisations and delegations including the International Congress and Convention Association, Pacific Asia Travel Association, Global Sustainable Tourism Council, Qingdao Airlines and Cambodia’s tourism delegation.
For a three-day expo, that is quite a full dance card.
Taking buyers beyond the exhibition booth
The organisers also followed one of the oldest and most reliable principles in travel selling: a destination becomes much easier to sell once you’ve experienced it.
ITE HCMC organised 16 familiarisation and press itineraries involving more than 400 delegates, including ministers, mayors, international buyers, media representatives and content creators.
The programs took participants beyond SECC and into Ho Chi Minh City’s culture, food, heritage and nightlife.
Experiences included the Reunification Palace, Ben Thanh Market, Cho Lon, Vespa night tours, performing arts and culinary experiences.
Other programs extended beyond the city into southern Vietnam, including a heritage and ecological itinerary linking Ho Chi Minh City with Vinh Long in the Mekong Delta.
For international buyers, these first-hand visits provide the raw material needed to develop new itineraries.
For Ho Chi Minh City, they support a bigger proposition: the city can be sold not only as a destination in its own right but also as a gateway to a broader southern Vietnam holiday.
That distinction matters, particularly for long-haul travellers unlikely to cross half the world for a quick look around the block.
Consumers were not forgotten
While business was the backbone of ITE HCMC 2026, consumers also had a seat at the table.
The public program included travel products, promotional offers, regional cuisine, local OCOP products, cultural performances and destination showcases.
Visitors could explore new holiday ideas, while exhibitors gained direct contact with consumers and industry buyers.
It is a useful reminder that, beneath all the industry language about yield, distribution, conversion and capacity, tourism still depends upon something remarkably simple: people wanting to go somewhere.
Twenty years on, the next chapter is already booked
ITE HCMC’s 20th edition gives the event good reason to look backwards.
The more important question, however, is what happens next.
The 2026 figures show an event that has grown into a substantial regional marketplace for tourism, MICE and destination promotion.
But the real commercial test will emerge after the exhibition lights have gone out.
How many of those 21,000-plus meetings will produce new contracts, programs and sales? How many buyers will add Vietnam products after experiencing them first-hand? And how much business will spread beyond Ho Chi Minh City into Vietnam’s wider regional tourism economy?
Those are the figures worth watching after the stands have been packed away.
The next edition is already in the diary.
ITE HCMC 2027 will run from 9 to 11 September 2027 at the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Centre in Ho Chi Minh City. The dates are now displayed on the official ITE HCMC website.
After 20 editions, ITE HCMC is no longer simply celebrating longevity.
It is making an increasingly strong case that Vietnam intends to be sitting at the table as Asia’s tourism business continues to change.
And judging by the meeting count, there should be no shortage of people sitting on the other side.
Official ITE HCMC website: www.itehcmc.travel
By: Maysa Punchanit – © 2026.
Read Time: 5 minutes.
Author Bio:
Maysa Punchanit has never waited for life to become easy. She’s far too practical for that. Instead, she’s built her path the way many strong women do, step by step, job by job, learning something useful everywhere she’s been.
Her working life has taken her through hospitality, sales, beauty therapy and the fast-moving world of social media, where she partnered with some of Thailand’s best-known companies. Along the way, she discovered a steady voice for blogging, warm, direct and grounded in real experience rather than marketing spin.
Being a single mother sharpened her resolve rather than slowing her stride. If anything, it gave her purpose.
Now with Destination Thailand News and Global Travel Media, Maysa arrives not as a newcomer, but as someone quietly battle-tested, resilient, capable and ready for the next chapter.
