Planning around Tết: what closes, for how long, and what it means for your timeline

Every recruitment calendar for Vietnam has one immovable constraint, and it is not an academic date. Tết, the lunar new year, reshapes the first quarter around itself.

What it affects

• Administrative offices close, which stops notarisation, legalisation and anything requiring a government stamp.
• Schools close, so counsellor visits and parent evenings are impossible.
• Agencies run skeleton staff, and the weeks either side are slow rather than normal.
• Families are travelling and occupied. Marketing spend in that window buys very little attention.

The mistake that costs an intake

An applicant starting document legalisation two or three weeks before Tết will not finish before it. If that document is needed for a visa appointment, the intake moves. This happens every year, to institutions that did not know to ask.

How to plan for it

Find the date for the specific year before anything else goes into the calendar — it moves. Then treat roughly the fortnight before and after as unavailable for anything requiring another party. Schedule agent training and content production into that window instead; those are the activities that do not need the country to be open.

A small courtesy that is noticed

A short new year message to your agent partners, sent before the holiday rather than after, costs nothing and is remembered. Relationships here are long and personal, and the institutions that acknowledge the calendar are treated differently from those that do not.

Season planning with an in-country team: Logistics Arrangement →