Your Hội An Address Changed: A 2026 Guide to the New Ward Names for Booking, E-Visa and Taxis

If you booked a stay in Hội An for the summer or autumn of 2026 and the address on your confirmation no longer matches the one in the Vietnam e-visa form — or the one your Grab driver's app is showing — nothing has gone wrong. Hội An's address simply changed. On 1 July 2025, "Hội An City, Quảng Nam Province" stopped existing as an administrative unit. The Old Town is still exactly where it has always been on the north bank of the Thu Bồn; only the paperwork around it was redrawn. This is the practical guide nobody has written in English yet: old ward to new ward, what to type in each official field, and what to tell a driver.

We run a riverside hotel on the south bank of the Thu Bồn, so we have spent the past year answering the same three questions from arriving guests — what do I put in the e-visa "ward/commune" box, why does Booking.com show one address and my passport stamp another, and how do I get a Grab to bring me to the right place. This piece collects the answers, with our own address as the worked example. If you want the bigger story of why the change happened, we cover that separately in Hội An vs Đà Nẵng: what the 2026 heritage merger actually means. This post is purely the logistics.

What changed in Hội An on 1 July 2025?

On 12 June 2025 Vietnam's National Assembly passed Resolution 202/2025/QH15, the law that consolidated the country's 63 provinces and cities into 34. Quảng Nam Province and the neighbouring city of Đà Nẵng were merged into a single, larger centrally-governed unit that keeps the name Đà Nẵng City. As part of the same reform, the old district level of government was abolished nationwide from 1 July 2025, and provincial cities like Hội An were dissolved as administrative units and reorganised directly into wards (phường) and communes (xã).

In concrete terms: "thành phố Hội An" (Hội An City) and its dozen-plus small wards no longer appear in the address hierarchy. In their place are three new wards and one island commune, all sitting directly under Đà Nẵng City. The new Đà Nẵng is large — 94 commune-level units in total — but for a traveller heading to the lantern-lit Old Town, only four names matter.

What are the new Hội An ward names in 2026?

Here is the full mapping. The four units that replaced Hội An City, and the old wards and communes folded into each:

Phường Hội An — the historic core. Formed from the old wards of Minh An, Cẩm Phô, Sơn Phong and Cẩm Nam, plus the former commune of Cẩm Kim. This is the ward that contains the UNESCO-inscribed Old Town, the Japanese Covered Bridge, the central market, the An Hội lantern night-market peninsula, and the south-bank riverfront at Cẩm Nam — which is where our hotel sits.

Phường Hội An Tây ("Hội An West") — formed from the old wards of Thanh Hà, Tân An and Cẩm An, plus the former commune of Cẩm Hà. This ward covers the western and northern approaches, the Thanh Hà pottery village, and the inland side of the An Bàng / Cửa Đại beach road.

Phường Hội An Đông ("Hội An East") — formed from the old wards of Cẩm Châu and Cửa Đại, plus the former commune of Cẩm Thanh. This ward runs east to the coast: it holds Cửa Đại beach, much of An Bàng, and the Cẩm Thanh nipa-palm "coconut forest" with its basket-boat tours.

Xã Tân Hiệp — the island commune of Cù Lao Chàm, eight nautical miles offshore. Because of its island character it was left untouched by the reorganisation and keeps its existing name.

Quick reference — old to new: > • Minh An, Cẩm Phô, Sơn Phong, Cẩm Nam, Cẩm Kim → Phường Hội An > • Thanh Hà, Tân An, Cẩm An, Cẩm Hà → Phường Hội An Tây > • Cẩm Châu, Cửa Đại, Cẩm Thanh → Phường Hội An Đông > • Cù Lao Chàm → Xã Tân Hiệp (unchanged)

One detail worth holding onto: the province field changed too. Where your old paperwork said "Quảng Nam," the correct entry now is Đà Nẵng (sometimes written "Thành phố Đà Nẵng"). Quảng Nam as a province no longer exists.

What do I type in the Vietnam e-visa "ward/commune" field?

The Vietnam e-visa application (evisa.gov.vn) asks for your intended address of stay, broken into province/city, district, and ward/commune. The form's address database is being updated to the post-merger structure, so what you see depends on when you apply. Two scenarios cover almost everyone:

If the form shows the new structure: select Đà Nẵng as the city, and then choose the ward your accommodation falls in — Phường Hội An for anywhere in or beside the Old Town and the south-bank riverside, Phường Hội An Tây for the Thanh Hà / western side, or Phường Hội An Đông for the Cửa Đại / An Bàng / Cẩm Thanh beach side. Under the two-tier model there is no longer a separate "district" line to fill for these wards.

If the form still shows the old structure (province Quảng Nam, district/city Hội An, then the old small wards): use the old names that match your booking — for the Old Town that is usually Minh An or Cẩm Phô; for the south-bank riverside, Cẩm Nam. An e-visa issued against the pre-merger address remains valid; immigration is not rejecting visas over the renaming. The safest move is simply to match whatever your hotel's confirmation says, and to keep that confirmation on your phone.

If you are at all unsure which ward your hotel sits in, ask the property directly before you submit — any Hội An hotel can tell you its new ward in one line. For us, the answer is Phường Hội An (formerly Cẩm Nam), Đà Nẵng City.

Why does Booking.com show a different address than my visa?

Online travel platforms, map providers and government databases are all updating to the new structure on their own timelines, so for a transitional period you will genuinely see two versions of the same address in circulation. Booking.com, Agoda or Airbnb may still list "Hội An, Quảng Nam"; Google Maps may show "Đà Nẵng"; your e-visa might show either. None of these is an error — they are snapshots taken at different points in the rollout.

The practical rule: the physical location has not moved a single metre. A pin dropped on the Japanese Bridge, on An Bàng beach, or on a south-bank riverside hotel points to exactly the same spot it did in 2024. When platforms disagree on the text label, trust the map pin and the hotel's own directions over the administrative wording. Save your hotel's location pin to your phone before you fly, and the renaming becomes invisible to your actual journey.

What should I tell a Grab driver or taxi in 2026?

Good news: drivers do not navigate by ward names. A Grab or Be driver routes to the map pin you set in the app, and a metered taxi is told a landmark plus a street, not an administrative ward. The 2025 renaming has had essentially zero effect on how you actually get a ride.

What works in practice:

On Grab / Be: set your destination by dropping the pin on the map (or by selecting the hotel from the app's place search), not by typing a ward. If you type an address, "Hội An" still resolves perfectly well — the apps keep the legacy name as a searchable alias. Confirm the pin sits on the right bank of the river before you confirm the ride.

With a metered taxi or a private transfer from Đà Nẵng airport (DAD): give the driver the Old Town ("Phố cổ Hội An") as the anchor, then the specific street and the bank of the river. For us that is: "Hội An, south bank — Cẩm Nam — Nguyễn Tri Phương." Drivers know the Old Town and they know the neighbourhood names that locals still use every day; the old ward names like Cẩm Nam remain in full living use as place-names even though they are no longer official administrative units. You will never need to say "Phường Hội An" to a driver.

From Đà Nẵng International Airport the drive is about 45 minutes to an hour; the airport's own name and code are unchanged by the merger.

A quick checklist for arriving travellers

Here is the whole thing distilled to what to actually do:

1. On your e-visa: enter city = Đà Nẵng; ward = Phường Hội An (Old Town and south-bank riverside), Phường Hội An Tây (Thanh Hà / west), or Phường Hội An Đông (Cửa Đại / An Bàng / Cẩm Thanh). If the form still shows the old layout, match your hotel confirmation instead — both are accepted. 2. On Booking / Agoda / Airbnb: ignore whether it says "Quảng Nam" or "Đà Nẵng." Save the map pin, not the text. 3. In Grab / Be: route to the pin, not the ward name. "Hội An" still works as a search term. 4. To a taxi driver: say "Phố cổ Hội An" (the Old Town) plus your street and river bank. You do not need the new ward name. 5. From the airport: Đà Nẵng (DAD), about 45–60 minutes; nothing about the airport changed. 6. If in doubt: message your hotel and ask for its new ward in one line. We will always send ours.

Where does our hotel fall — the worked example

Because abstract mappings are easy to misread, here is the conversion done on a real address. Our riverside hotel sits on the south bank of the Thu Bồn at Cẩm Nam, a short cycle from the An Hội footbridge into the Old Town.

Old address (pre-July 2025): Cẩm Nam Ward, Hội An City, Quảng Nam Province. New address (from July 2025): Phường Hội An, Đà Nẵng City.

Same gate, same river view, same five-minute ride to the lantern night-market — only the last two lines of the address changed. That is true for every property and landmark in town: the label moved, the place did not. Hội An remains a UNESCO World Heritage town on the Thu Bồn, and the river that has defined it since its Faifo trading-port days still runs past the front of it exactly as before.

About this article. Synthesised from Vietnamese primary sources — Resolution 202/2025/QH15 (National Assembly, 12 June 2025); the Đà Nẵng ward-arrangement listings reported by vietnam.vn and Tuổi Trẻ; and Vietnamese-language reference pages on the new Phường Hội An, Hội An Tây and Hội An Đông wards — cross-checked against the Đà Nẵng city portal. Hotel-side primary reporting: a year of converting our own south-bank Cẩm Nam address for arriving guests, and first-hand checks of how the e-visa form, the OTA listings and the Grab app each handle the renaming.