Purpose Tourism is one of the most notable features of the contemporary globalised world. The tourism industry is becoming increasingly vital to the economy of many developing and developed countries around the globe. The demand of the tourism industry has posed a challenge for tourism training providers to move towards a more responsive and internationalised curriculum to enhance work readiness for tourism graduates who are expected to work with an increased number of international tourists. The purpose of this paper is analyse whether and how internationalisation has been implemented in the tourism training programmes across six institutions in Vietnam. Design/methodology/approach The research deployed case studies as research strategy with interviews and document analysis as two instruments of data collection. Findings The major findings show that even though the tourism industry demands graduates to possess global competency, knowledge and skills, the curriculum does not prioritise the internationalisation dimensions and the faculty members are not facilitated to be internationally active in their roles. Overall, internationalisation is still fragmented and ad hoc in these institutions even though the private institutions in this research appear to be more responsive to the trend of internationalisation in education than their public counterparts. Research limitations/implications The paper provides recommendations on how to effectively embed internationalisation components into local tourism training programs in Vietnam. Originality/value The research bridges the gap in the literature on internationalisation of the local tourism programme in non-English-speaking countries.