Hoiana bids for Vietnamese players as Ho Tram runs its five-year pilot

Hoiana Resort & Golf, on the central coast near Hoi An, runs the biggest gaming floor in Vietnam — more than 140 tables and over 200 slot machines by its own count — and none of it is open to the people who live there. Entry is restricted to foreign passport holders.

Speaking at an industry summit in Manila in September 2026, chief executive Alan Teo said parent company Hoi An South Development is actively seeking a locals-gaming permit, while being frank that the approval sits with the government and will not come quickly. The precedent he pointed to is not encouraging on timing: The Grand Ho Tram, near Ho Chi Minh City, was finally allowed to admit eligible domestic players under a five-year pilot in late 2025, more than twelve years after it opened.

The rules those players meet are set by Decree 03/2017/ND-CP, in force since March 2017. A Vietnamese citizen must be at least 21 and of full civil capacity, must show either a steady income of at least VND 10 million a month or liability at the third band of personal income tax, and must buy an entry ticket — VND 1 million for 24 consecutive hours, or VND 25 million for a month. Play and chip purchases must be in dong, and a player can be barred at the request of a parent, spouse or adult child, or on their own application.

For poker specifically, the widening pilot changes less than it sounds. Neither of the two resorts open to locals publishes a poker room, a rake schedule or a tournament calendar. Hoiana's table list offers Three Card Poker, Stud Poker and Texas Hold'em Bonus Poker, all of them banked by the house; Ho Tram lists "Texas Hold'em Poker" without saying whether anyone is playing against anyone but the dealer. What is expanding in Vietnam is casino access, not player-versus-player poker.