The domestic tourism has developed quickly in the past few years. It is expected to continue growing strongly in the upcoming decades. Many online tools have made a complete and thorough impact on various tourism activities such as brand advertisement, booking, etc. How do the social media, the sharing economy and other advanced technologies impact the tourism industry in the next period?
The Vietnamese policies aim to make tourism the major economic sector. The revised Tourism Laws approved by the National Assembly on June 19, 2017 has established a better legal foundation for tourism . However, Vietnam has not initiated online tourism to showcase the unlimited beauty of the country.
According to the General Statistics Office of Vietnam, by June 2017, the waves of foreign tourists coming to Vietnam reached 6 million, a 30% increase in comparison to that of the same period in 2016. However, in 2016, Vietnam ranked fifth among ASEAN nations with regard to the number of foreign tourists with over 10 million, one third compared to Thailand’s.
Recently, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism proposed to the Government various solutions to help reach the growth rate of 30% in 2017. In order for tourism to become the major economic sector of Vietnam, activities to promote and advertise Vietnamese tourism and to offer e-visa to more countries tourists should be conducted.
Visa waiver and online tourism are solutions tied to the application of technologies and communications. In a greater scale, online tourism is creating new opportunities for tourism to achieve more substantial development.
Notably, the revenue of online tourism in the world in 2016 increased by 14% and reached approximately 545 billion USD. The Pacific Asian and Latin American market contributed greatly to this development. The North American market is still the greatest online tourism market of the year. But since 2017, the Pacific Asian market has dominated the field, one year earlier than expectation.
The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) determines that the technology revolution and social networks are decisive factors in the rapid development of tourism in recent years. The increase number of free and independent traveler (FIT) using services offered by online travel agents (OTAs) has transformed the tourism market remarkably. In South East Asia, Google estimates that the revenue of online tourism will increase from 22 billion USD in 2015 to 90 billion USD in 2025.
How will online tourism in Vietnam turn out? Which strategies hotels, tourism operators, accommodations and resorts, etc. need to adjust? What is the IT solution to meet the demand of FIT? In the macro level, which policies, laws or regulations need to be changed? What are the difficulties and advantages in online tourism development? Have the human resources in tourism adapted to a new trend of online business?
All the above questions will be answered at the “Online tourism day” for the first time organized in Ho Chi Minh city. The objective of this program is to attract a higher attention from agencies, organizations and enterprises to online tourism. Moreover, it is also important to work toward the connectivity between tourism operators and enterprises in fields of IT, online promotion, transaction online, insurance, etc.
