COMMENT: I have just spent a week in Vietnam where tourism has just gone from boom – record numbers of visitors in the first three months of this year – to bust, thanks to soaring jet fuel prices and plummeting visitor numbers.

In the midst of all this, the Ho Chi Minh City’s People’s Committee – think Clover Moore but with real power – lifted a ban on Airbnb-style short-term holiday lets that was imposed about this time last year.

Holiday lets were forbidden in apartment buildings for the same reasons they were restricted here – noise, anti-social behaviour by guests, security concerns and the effect it had on the cost of housing for ordinary Saigonese.

Among the worst abuses were “entrepreneurs” who would lease an entire floor of a block and sublet the rooms for parties.

They’re back, but to impose some level of control, apartment owners are now required to register as licensed accommodation providers for short-term tourist rentals and comply fully with Vietnam’s tourism laws as well as the rules of the individual buildings.

If their guests are given access to common property, such as swimming pools, gyms and games rooms, the hosts have to pay a fee to the owners corporation.

The sudden imposition of the ban last year starkly exposed the effects that short-term lets had on residential rentals. According to some sources, rents and apartment prices fell by as much as 10 per cent when short-term lets were removed from the equation.

It remains to be seen how this will play out, but the principle that holiday lets are not exactly the same as residential lets and therefore the buildings’ collective owners should be compensated for the use of common property, has a certain appeal.

It makes sense. If one owner is contributing more to the wear and tear on the pool and gym, and making a profit from it, some of that money should go back to the other owners.

Tourism is a big deal for the Vietnamese economy, hence the urge to have some form of holiday letting beyond the hotels and resorts.

But right now, thanks to Trump’s war in Iran, empty hotel rooms are making SE Asian countries a low-cost option even without Airbnb. Check out my report online in the SMH’s Traveller pages.