Phu Quoc's new airport opens in April 2027. Until then the island is a building site and the visa rule has a trap.

Vietnam's state news agency counted more than 7,600 people working on the Phu Quoc airport site on 2 October. The concrete frame of the new Terminal 2 is about 95 per cent finished, roughly 9,500 glass panels are going onto the front of it, and the automated baggage system is around 60 per cent installed.

None of it opens this winter. A technical flight is booked for 30 December to test the building, and the terminal is scheduled to start carrying passengers in April 2027, a few months before Vietnam hosts the APEC leaders' week on the island. Fly to Phu Quoc before then and you land at the old terminal, on an island running the biggest construction programme in its history.

Running underneath that is a second problem nobody advertises. Phu Quoc lets Indians in without a visa, on conditions that stop applying the moment the trip changes shape.

What is being built, and when it lands

President Luong Cuong named Phu Quoc the host of APEC 2027 on a visit to the island on 14 January 2025. Everything since has been timed backwards from that week.

The airport is the largest piece. Sun Group is the investor, Changi Airports International signed on as adviser in early 2026, and the approved master plan takes the airport from about 6 million passengers a year in 2025 to 24 million, with a long term ceiling of 50 million. The baggage system going in now is built for 7,560 departing bags an hour. The airport operating today handles a small fraction of that.

The rest of the island is being rebuilt around the route the delegations will take. VnExpress reported in September that the DT975 corridor runs 62 metres wide, with ten lanes of road and a light rail line down the middle: 17.59 km of double track, most of it at ground level, about 780 metres elevated and 2 km underground, across six stations. It is designed for 4,500 passengers an hour and roughly 20 minutes from the airport to the convention centre. Next to it go a 3 km ceremonial boulevard, a 4,030 seat theatre, and an upgrade of An Thoi port with a 40 hectare development attached, costed at about VND 17 trillion.

Technical trenching was around 65 per cent complete in early September and bridge work past 55 per cent. Asphalt is scheduled from late 2026 into early 2027. Crews are working three shifts. None of this is hidden and none of it is slowing down, which is the part that matters to you: the island you book for December is in the loudest phase of it.

The visa rule, and the way it breaks

Phu Quoc is the one part of Vietnam an Indian passport enters without a visa. Thirty days, no fee, no application, on four conditions that are easy to read and easy to break.

You have to arrive at Phu Quoc directly from outside Vietnam, by air or sea. Your passport needs six months of validity. You need an onward ticket out of Phu Quoc to somewhere that is not Vietnam, inside the thirty days. And you have to stay on the island.

The last one is where trips come apart. Connecting through Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi counts only if you stay inside the international transit area. Clear immigration at either airport and take a domestic flight down to the island, which is the normal way to reach Phu Quoc from India, and the exemption does not apply to you. You entered Vietnam on the mainland, and that needed a visa. There is also no mechanism to extend the thirty days from the island, and no way to add three days in Hoi An at the end of the trip on an exemption that forbids the mainland.

The visa is not the expensive part. Vietnam's e-visa runs up to 90 days, single or multiple entry, at $25 or $50 through evisa.gov.vn, which at ₹96.13 to the dollar is about ₹2,400 or ₹4,800. Standard processing is three to five working days. Against the cost of a refused boarding it is the cheapest thing you will buy. Vietnam also tightened its entry and stay paperwork with effect from 15 September, so this is a bad year to arrive holding an argument instead of a document.

What this means for a trip from India

Getting there is the weak link. Vietjet opened Delhi and Mumbai nonstops to Phu Quoc in September 2022, two a week each. Since then the Indian link has mostly been charter flying, which appears and disappears with whichever operator has blocked seats. Search your own dates in live inventory before you plan anything around a route map.

If what you want is Vietnam rather than Phu Quoc specifically, the mainland is the better buy this winter, and it carries none of these tripwires. Vietnam took nearly 16 million international arrivals in the first eight months of 2026, up 14.4 per cent on last year, and more than 612,000 of them were Indian. The infrastructure serving that is already built and open.

Three cities, three different arguments. The Hanoi full day city tour at ₹2,653 is the one I would book on a first trip, because Hanoi is the hardest of the three to crack alone and a guide saves you a day of walking in circles. Ba Na Hills from ₹282 is the cheapest thing we sell in Vietnam and the most oversold: it is a mountaintop theme park with a famous bridge, it is full by ten in the morning, and it is worth the money only on the first cable car up. The Ho Chi Minh City premier tour at ₹3,622 is the most expensive of the three and the one with the clearest case, because the war history in that city is the sort of thing you want explained out loud rather than read off a plaque.

If the island was the whole point of the trip, Da Nang has a cheaper version of it.

The Cham Island day trip at ₹2,446 gets you clear water and a boat ride without flying to the far south of the country. The warning that comes with it is the sea. Boats to the Cham Islands get cancelled in rough weather and the central coast is rough well into the autumn, so book it early in your Da Nang stay rather than on the last day, and keep a wet weather plan behind it.

What to do about it

• If the plan is Phu Quoc alone, confirm your inbound flight actually lands at Phu Quoc from outside Vietnam. A domestic leg from Ho Chi Minh City that clears immigration is a different trip, legally.
• If there is any chance you will add the mainland, buy the e-visa before you fly. Three to five working days, $25, and it removes the whole problem.
• Hold your onward ticket out of Phu Quoc before you check in. The exemption requires it and the airline, not immigration, is who will ask first.
• Book hotels on the south of the island or in Duong Dong town if construction noise matters to you, and ask the property directly what is being built next door. The works are concentrated along the airport to convention centre corridor.
• If you are choosing Vietnam for the first time, go to the mainland this winter and keep Phu Quoc for 2028, once the terminal, the rail line and the boulevard are finished and the island has stopped being a site.

What is still unclear

April 2027 is a target, not a guarantee, and a technical flight on 30 December is a test rather than an opening. Capacity figures move depending on which document you read: 18 million by 2027 in the 2025 master plan reporting, 20 to 24 million by 2030 in the latest state media accounts. Whether the light rail opens with the terminal or after it has not been stated. And nobody has published what Phu Quoc's entry rules look like during APEC week itself, which is the one week in 2027 when a leisure booking there is a gamble.

Phu Quoc in 2028 will be the best connected island in Vietnam. Phu Quoc this December is a building site with a thirty day visa rule that punishes the most convenient way of getting there.

The island is not ruined and the beaches have not moved. But the gap between the renderings and the arrivals hall is about eighteen months wide, and the people selling you Phu Quoc packages this winter are describing the first one. Go if you want the quiet version before an APEC summit and a 24 million passenger airport bring the crowds. Just go with the right visa, and with some idea of what you will hear through the hotel window.

Figures, dates and rules were read on 5 October 2026 from Vietnam News Agency reporting of 2 October on the airport works, VnExpress of 21 September on the DT975 corridor and light rail, The Investor of 22 March and International Airport Review of 1 April on the master plan and the Changi advisory role, Viet Nam News on the APEC 2027 host announcement of 14 January 2025, Vietnam National Administration of Tourism arrival figures released on 7 September and reported by Vietnam Investment Review, and the published conditions of the Phu Quoc exemption and the e-visa on evisa.gov.vn. The dollar is taken at ₹96.13 and moves daily. Our prices are today's, so trust your voucher over this page.