What a private trip in Vietnam costs
A price you cannot take apart is a price you cannot compare. This page gives the band per person per day, then the hotel, vehicle, guide, flight, boat and ticket rates that add up to it, then the honest reasons another company can quote you less.
The band, per person per day
Almost every Vietnam quote you receive will be a single number for a whole trip, which makes two quotes impossible to compare unless they cover the same nights, the same vehicle and the same class of room. So start here instead: what one day of a private trip costs one person, land only, two people sharing a room.
| Travel style | What you sleep in | Party of two | Party of six | Party of eight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comfortable | Three and four-star hotels of 20 to 60 rooms, booked by name; a bay boat of 20 cabins or fewer | USD 255 – 390 | USD 210 – 320 | USD 195 – 300 |
| Excellent | Four and five-star city hotels and beach resorts; a bay boat of 12 cabins or fewer | USD 325 – 500 | USD 270 – 410 | USD 250 – 385 |
| Exceptional | The best room in the best house in each town; a six-cabin wooden boat, or the whole boat to yourselves | USD 370 – 565 | USD 300 – 465 | USD 285 – 435 |
Land only. International flights are not in these figures and we do not mark them up. The bands come straight from our own trip prices: a four-day northern short break at USD 890 for a party of eight is USD 222 a day, a twenty-one day trip at USD 5,490 is USD 261 a day, and a four-day island trip that includes a flight to Con Dao sits near the top of the band at USD 297. The one route that breaks the band is a whole-boat charter in Lan Ha, where you are paying for a vessel rather than a cabin; that runs above USD 460 a day and the tour page says so.
The three styles are hotel and boat class, not service class. The guide, the driver, the vehicle, the itinerary and the phone number are identical in all three. Nobody gets a better guide for paying more, which is the reverse of how most upgrade ladders work and is worth checking on any quote you hold.
The same quote, taken apart
These are the rates our suppliers charge us in 2026. They are ranges because a room in Hanoi in March and the same room in June are not the same price, and because a guide who speaks Japanese costs more than one who speaks English. Nothing here is a secret; any operator in Vietnam works from a version of this table.
| Line on the invoice | What it buys | Typical cost |
|---|---|---|
| Hotel, per room per night — Comfortable | Air-conditioned three or four-star, breakfast, walkable location | USD 55 – 95 |
| Hotel, per room per night — Excellent | Four or five-star, or a 20-room boutique house in an old quarter | USD 110 – 190 |
| Hotel, per room per night — Exceptional | Top suite category, resort villa, restored heritage property | USD 240 – 520 |
| Private car and driver, per day | Four-seat sedan, fuel, tolls, parking, the driver’s own meals | USD 95 – 130 |
| Private van and driver, per day | Sixteen-seat van for a party of five to eight with luggage | USD 140 – 180 |
| Private guide, per day | Licensed national guide, English, an eight-hour day | USD 45 – 70 |
| Private guide, per day, other languages | French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean | USD 70 – 110 |
| Domestic flight, per person per sector | Hanoi–Da Nang, Hanoi–Ho Chi Minh City and similar, 20 kg hold bag | USD 55 – 140 |
| Domestic flight, Ho Chi Minh City–Con Dao | One hour; the alternative is ten hours of road and sea | USD 47 – 130 |
| Bay cabin, per cabin per night | Lan Ha, boat of 20 cabins or fewer, full board, kayaks | USD 190 – 320 |
| Bay cabin, per cabin per night, small wooden boat | Six to twelve cabins, full board | USD 380 – 650 |
| Entrance fees, per person per day | One or two paid sites on a normal touring day | USD 2 – 22 |
The ticket line is the one people assume is trivial, so here are the actual gate prices, checked in September 2026. Trang An in Ninh Binh is 250,000 VND a head on a shared sampan, or 1,000,000 VND for the whole boat — and the boat takes four passengers and one rower, no more. The Imperial City in Hue is 200,000 VND, each of the big royal tombs is 150,000 VND, and the four-site combined ticket is 530,000 VND. Phong Nha cave is 150,000 VND plus 55,000 VND for the river boat; Thien Duong cave is 250,000 VND. The Lan Ha Bay entry fee is 30,000 VND a head, and the Ha Long route fees are 240,000 to 290,000 VND depending on which route the authority assigns you. The Ha Giang border area permit, compulsory for foreign passport holders since June 2026, is about 250,000 VND.
Our margin sits on top of the supplier lines above. On a normal trip it is 20 to 25 per cent of the land cost, and it is the only place we make anything: no commission from hotels, no cut from a lacquer factory, no kickback on a cooking class. If you add the supplier column for your own itinerary and land within about a quarter of our number, our quote is honest. If somebody else is 40 per cent under the supplier total, something in their itinerary is not what the words say it is.
What moves the price, in order of size
Six things change the number, and they are not equally important. In our experience the first one is worth more than the other five combined, and it is the one travellers think about last.
1. How many of you there are
A vehicle and a guide cost the same whether two people or eight use them. Divided by two they are the largest single line on your invoice; divided by six they nearly disappear. Everything else — the room, the meals, the tickets — is genuinely per person and does not move.
Here is the same trip costed twice. It is our five-day Hanoi, Ninh Binh and Lan Ha route, at the Comfortable class, and the last row is the price published on its own page, so you can check us.
| Line | Party of two | Party of six |
|---|---|---|
| Vehicle and driver, five days | USD 600, seven-seat | USD 825, sixteen-seat |
| Guide, four touring days | USD 240 | USD 240 |
| Tolls, parking, driver’s meals and bed | USD 85 | USD 95 |
| Shared by the whole party | USD 925 | USD 1,160 |
| Shared cost, per person | USD 463 | USD 193 |
| Trang An sampan, four passengers per boat | USD 20 | USD 13 |
| Published price, per person | USD 1,550 | USD 1,270 |
The published gap is USD 280 a head. The shared-cost arithmetic explains USD 270 of it and the sampan explains most of the rest: a party of two hires one boat between them, a party of six needs two boats and splits the cost six ways. Note that the six-person party costs the company more in absolute terms — a bigger van, a second sampan, more parking — and still pays less each. That is the whole of the arithmetic. There is no volume discount hiding behind it.
2. Hotel and boat class
Moving from Comfortable to Exceptional adds roughly 45 per cent to the trip and changes nothing about your days except where you sleep and, on the bay, what you sleep on. On a trip with two bay nights the boat alone can account for half the gap, because a cabin on a twenty-cabin steel boat and a cabin on a six-cabin wooden one are different products.
3. When you travel
Northern Vietnam between December and March, and the whole country over Tet and the Christmas fortnight, carry supplements from the hotels themselves — commonly 15 to 30 per cent on the room line, occasionally more on the coast at New Year. June to September in the north and the south is the other end of it, and the same room can be a third cheaper. When to go sets out what you trade for that.
4. How many domestic flights the route needs
Each internal sector is USD 55 to 140 a head, and it also eats about half a working day once you add two hours at the airport and both transfers. A twelve-day trip with four flights is not the same product as a twelve-day trip with two, in money or in hours.
5. How often you change hotel
A night that moves costs more than a night that stays. Every move is a vehicle day, a guide day, a set of tolls, and often a driver’s overnight allowance. Two nights in one town is almost always cheaper and usually better than one night in each of two.
6. Guide language and single occupancy
A French, German, Spanish, Japanese or Korean-speaking guide adds USD 25 to 40 a day. A solo traveller pays the room, not half the room, and the supplement runs from about USD 210 on a short northern trip to nearly USD 1,000 on a long one at the top class. We always show it as its own line rather than folding it into a bigger headline figure.
What is not in the price, and why not
Everything below could be added to a quote and sold to you at a markup. We leave it out and tell you what it costs, because you can nearly always buy it better than we can.
- International flights. We are not a consolidator and we would be quoting you a published fare with a fee on top. You also have preferences we cannot guess — an alliance, a stopover, a seat you can change. If you want help we will send you the routings that fit your first and last day at no charge.
- Travel insurance. We require you to hold it and we will ask to see the policy number before departure. We do not sell it because we are not licensed to, and because a policy bought in your own country pays your own hospital and repatriates you to your own address. Check that it covers the things you will actually do: motorbike pillion, kayaking, caving and any trek above 1,500 metres are common exclusions.
- Tips. Customary, never invoiced, never included. A guide who has been with you all day and a driver who has done 300 km deserve a decision from you, not a line item we collect and pass on with a delay. The usual range is USD 10 to 20 a day for the guide and USD 5 to 10 for the driver, from the party rather than from each person, and nobody will behave differently if you give less.
- The e-visa. USD 25 single entry, USD 50 multiple, about three working days, applied for by you at evisa.gov.vn. Agencies charge USD 30 to 80 to type your details into a government form and to hold a scan of your passport. See visas and entry for who needs one.
- Meals we have not listed. Breakfast is in every hotel rate, and we include the lunches and dinners where the location leaves you no real choice. The rest we leave open, because a bowl of pho is USD 2, a good restaurant dinner is USD 15 to 30, and picking is half of eating in Vietnam. A full-board quote hides a markup on food you did not choose.
- Drinks, laundry and personal spending. Including drinks means either a strict list or a padded price, and both are worse than paying for what you drink.
How a cheaper quote is made cheaper
A quote that undercuts ours by a third is not usually a company with better buying. It is nearly always one of the following, and every one of them is visible on the page if you know what to look for.
- Fewer guide days than touring days. The itinerary shows seven days; the inclusions say "guide on sightseeing days". Days two and six turn out to be "at leisure", which means a driver drops you somewhere and comes back. At USD 45 to 70 a day, cutting three guide days off a twelve-day trip takes USD 200 off a party of two. Count the guide days in the inclusions against the days in the itinerary.
- Hotels named by star rating instead of by name. "Four-star hotel or similar" is not a booking, it is an option. It lets the operator buy whatever is unsold in the week you travel, which in Vietnam can be a 300-room conference hotel by a flyover with a four-star plaque on it. Our quotes name the property and the room category, and if we have to substitute we tell you before we do it.
- A night bus or a night train where the quote implies a flight. "Transfer to Sapa" can mean a six-hour drive on the Lao Cai expressway or a sleeper bus that leaves at 22:00 and puts you on a Sapa street at 04:30. "Transfer to Hue" can mean a 1 hour 15 flight or fourteen hours on a train. The word is the same; the day afterwards is not.
- A forty-six cabin boat described in the same words as a twelve-cabin one. "Luxury cruise, Ha Long Bay, private balcony" fits both. Ask for the boat’s name and the number of cabins, then look at how many tenders are needed to get everyone into a kayak. A large boat also sails the busy central channel because that is where the big moorings are, which is a different afternoon from Lan Ha.
- Shopping stops that pay commission. A silk workshop, a lacquer factory, a pearl showroom or a jade centre on the road between two towns is not a sight, it is a revenue line. Commission runs from 10 to 30 per cent of whatever you spend and it is what allows the headline price to fall. Two such stops a day is a common pattern on the cheapest quotes, and it costs you ninety minutes each time.
- Entrance fees excluded and collected on the day. Perfectly legal, stated in tiny print, and it moves USD 60 to 120 a head off a two-week quote. It also puts your guide in the position of asking you for cash at a ticket window, which is nobody’s idea of a good morning. Every gate fee in your itinerary is inside our price.
- A "from" price that only exists for eight people in low season. The figure on the tour page is real, and it applies to a party of eight travelling in August at the lowest class. If you are two people in February you are three rows and two columns away from it. Every one of our tour pages shows the whole grid — four party sizes by three classes — for exactly this reason.
Sometimes a cheaper quote is simply a thinner company: no office, no operations line at three in the morning, one person forwarding your booking to a local supplier and keeping a margin. That can work perfectly well and it is genuinely cheaper. What it does not do is answer the phone when a typhoon closes the bay and eleven other parties want the same six hotel rooms ashore. You are buying the bad day, not the good one.
Reading a quote before you sign it
Five minutes with any quotation, ours included:
- Count the guide days in the inclusions and compare them with the days in the itinerary. If the numbers differ, ask which days you are alone.
- Find a hotel name and a room category for every night. If a night says "or similar", ask what the operator will do if the named property is full.
- For each move between towns, find the words that say aeroplane, train, car or bus, and the hours. If the quote only says "transfer", ask.
- Add up the gate fees for the sites listed, then check whether the quote includes them. The numbers earlier on this page are the real ones.
- Look for the words "shopping", "workshop", "demonstration" and "showroom" in the day-by-day. Ask how long each stop lasts and whether the operator is paid to take you.
- Check which row of the price grid your party actually sits in, and which month.
No commission stops
We do not take a cut from any shop, workshop or restaurant. If a place appears in your itinerary it is because it is worth the hour.
Deposit, then nothing until 35 days out
The deposit confirms the suppliers. The balance falls due 35 days before you arrive and not a day earlier. See how to book.
One party, one vehicle, one guide
Eight travellers is the hard ceiling, ten on the family and photography routes. Nobody is added to your vehicle to fill it.
Questions travellers ask most
Why is your quote higher than the one I have from another company?
Usually one of six reasons, and they are all checkable. Count the guide days in each quote. Check whether the hotels are named or described by star rating. Look at how each transfer between towns is actually made — a flight and a night bus are the same word on a page and a very different next morning. Ask for the boat’s name and cabin count. Look for shopping stops. And check whether gate fees are inside the price or collected from you on the day.
If all six come back identical and the other quote is still 30 per cent lower, take it. That would mean somebody is buying better than we are, and we would rather you travelled well and cheaply than badly and expensively with us. What we will not do is match a price by removing a guide day and not telling you.
It is also fair to say the plain thing: we are a small company with an office and an operations line, and our margin is 20 to 25 per cent. A one-person agency forwarding your booking to the same local supplier has lower costs and can charge less.
Do you ever discount?
Not off a published grid, because that would mean the grid was wrong. What does move the number is the shape of the trip: travelling in June rather than February, taking two nights in one town instead of one night in each of two, dropping an internal flight for a three-hour drive, or adding a couple to your party.
Tell us the budget you actually have and we will build to it and show you what came out. That is a more useful conversation than a percentage off.
Is the price per person or for the whole party?
Per person, with two people sharing a room, and land only. The grid on every tour page has four rows for party size because the per-person figure changes so much with it — commonly by a quarter between two travellers and eight.
A solo traveller pays a single supplement shown as its own line, from about USD 210 on a short northern trip to close to USD 1,000 on a long trip at the top class, because a room and a cabin cost the same whether one person or two sleeps in them.
What is the cheapest trip you would actually sell?
Around USD 690 a head for three days, for a party of six or more, at the Comfortable class, in a single region — the Hanoi craft villages route or the short Mekong route. Below that we would be cutting guide days or moving you into hotels we would not name, and at that point you are better served by a set-departure group tour, which we do not sell. Private or group says plainly when the group product is the right buy.
Read next
Tell us about the trip you have in mind
Dates, party size and the places you care about are enough to start. You get a draft route and an indicative price, not a brochure.