Quang Nam has made many efforts and determination to transform tourism digitally, however, the results achieved are still modest and only in the early stages of the concept of smart tourism.
Many smart applications
The smart tourism software system of Quang Nam province is one of the outstanding projects in the digital transformation program of Quang Nam tourism sector, developed by the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism in coordination with VNPT Quang Nam, and put into application from 2022.
Mr. Nguyen Thanh Hong - Director of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism said that Quang Nam Tourism supports the Quang Nam tourism industry with an additional tool to promote and introduce the land, people, culture, history and tourism potential of Quang Nam province.
Recently, the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism has agreed to officially release a smart digital tourism map integrated on Quang Nam Tourism, helping visitors look up locations directly on the digital map, filter layers by location, hotel, restaurant, shopping, event/festival...
According to the plan, by 2025, the tourism industry will digitize more than 10,000 image data files of destinations, products, and tourism services; 9,000 raw files and nearly 100 films and trailers about destinations, products, tourism services, intangible cultural heritage, etc.
2024 is also the last year to rent information technology services of the Quang Nam smart tourism software system according to Decision 1390 of the People's Committee (2021) with an estimated budget from 2021 - 2024 of 12.1 billion. After more than 30 months of operation, the Quang Nam smart tourism software system is currently being deployed at the Provincial Tourism Promotion Center with the ability to share and use for tourism applications and services of the province and the whole country.
Up to now, the system has updated 171 cultural and natural destinations; 55 3D data, video clips; 17 VR360 data points; 1,303 tourism service data; 161 hotels, resorts; 465 homestays, villas; 257 culinary data; 63 shopping data; 74 entertainment data; 283 travel service data; 1,245 news and event data... This is considered an important data warehouse for Quang Nam tourism businesses to exploit and use, contributing to the goal of digital transformation in the tourism industry. ( KHÁNH LINH )
Many localities have applied technology to promote and attract tourists. Notably, My Son Temple Complex has deployed the application of the multilingual automatic commentary system and the VR360 virtual tour application. Hoi An City has applied Augmented Reality Tourism and Hoi An-metaverse Virtual Tourism to promote and introduce the image of Hoi An to tourists...
Infrastructure must come first
According to Mr. Nguyen Dang Huu, a freelance tour guide in Quang Nam, in the past, tourists booked tours through travel agencies, but now most of them proactively plan their trips by registering for accommodation, sightseeing, dining, etc. online, especially with young tourists.
“Digital transformation makes everything change rapidly. As tour guides, we have to adapt and take advantage of social media and digital applications to connect with customers, instead of waiting for customers to come to us like before,” Mr. Huu shared.
Implementing digital transformation in tourism effectively and with practical value requires a systematic strategy and focused implementation. However, according to the leader of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, although the digital transformation process in tourism has received attention, the specific mechanism for digitizing destinations and the process of implementing "digitalization" and "smartening" destinations still face many difficulties and shortcomings.
Digitalization activities are still fragmented and have not yet maximized their effectiveness because the database has not been shared or connected uniformly, leading to difficulties in the process of managing, controlling, and reporting industry data statistics to make judgments about development trends.
Tourism digital transformation in Quang Nam is currently mainly implemented in destination promotion activities, service booking; supporting customers to explore and experience. Other areas such as product sales, tourism management, etc. have not received proper attention and investment.
Destinations have sold products directly to customers through smart applications, but this activity is still small-scale, so the spread is still limited. The lack of an e-commerce trading floor for tourism is a typical example.
Although digital transformation is considered a trend and urgent in tourism activities today, not all businesses are interested or have the conditions to implement it, especially small and medium enterprises.
Santa Sea Villa Hotel is one of the few pioneering accommodation establishments in digital transformation in business operations in Hoi An City. Santa Sea Villa has deployed room booking software through OTAs (online booking) websites.
To date, over 50% of hotel bookings are transacted through the OTAs system, allowing guests to directly book rooms and learn about hotel programs, products, and services without going through an intermediary.
OTAs are also popular smart booking applications chosen by accommodation businesses in Hoi An. Ms. Pham Thi Linh Chi - President of the Quang Nam Villas and Homestay Association admitted that most members of the association are currently only using OTAs channels. Business activities such as marketing, data digitization, etc. are very few. The reason given by the owners of this model is that the establishments are small in scale, while the investment cost for digital transformation is high, the data synchronization time is long, not to mention the need for a technical team...
Up to now, nearly 400 members of the Quang Nam Villas and Homestay Association seem to have no business that has truly implemented digital transformation.
“Digital transformation in tourism is the analysis of a tourist’s consumption index, thereby helping businesses calculate specific business costs and profits to manage risks, so it is more suitable for large hotels with a large number of rooms. As for small-scale villas and homestays with only 4-8 rooms, they mainly transact on OTAs channels, which is simple and easy. Not to mention, the investment cost is high and unnecessary, so almost no facility does it,” Ms. Linh informed.
Digital transformation is not a big concern for the small and medium-sized business community in Hoi An, including travel businesses. Ms. Pham Que Anh - Director of Hoi An Express Travel Company admitted that digital transformation at businesses is currently only at a simple level such as switching from printing paper documents to scanning codes, exchanging, connecting customers and taking advantage of data warehouses of destinations, sightseeing, etc.
Small and medium-sized tourism businesses in Vietnam have yet to make many changes in digital transformation.
Difficulty of digital transformation
According to the E-conomy SEA 2023 report in the Southeast Asia digital economy research program conducted by Google and Temasek, the digital economy segment in travel demand in 2023 increased by 40% compared to 2019.
Revenue could reach $100 billion, focusing on e-commerce, travel/tourism, food distribution, transportation, network communications and digital financial services.
In Vietnam, we can easily see a clear change in digital service experience at large companies such as EVN, Viettel or commercial banks Vietcombank, Techcombank... However, in small and medium-sized tourism businesses in Vietnam, the application of digital transformation is still very modest.
As the director of Indochina Unique Tourist, after a period of research and application at the enterprise, I realized that digital transformation is only successful for large enterprises, corporations or enterprises with strong financial resources, good staff, and wide scope of operations. Meanwhile, small and medium-sized enterprises will have great difficulty in digital transformation.
Specifically, my recent study on digital transformation activities for 79 travel businesses in Quang Nam and Da Nang showed that most business owners are quite aware of the benefits of digital transformation, but they face many difficulties in implementing it.
According to the definition of Enrst & Young (2018), to successfully transform digitally, a business must go through three stages: stage 1 is digitization, stage 2 is process digitization and stage 3 is digital transformation. With this process, the number of travel business groups that I surveyed are only in stage 1, or have not yet reached stage 1.
In fact, many travel businesses have not yet applied software in business management and operations. Many units still use Microsoft Word and Excel, old and traditional ways to communicate and manage internal work with each other.
Need attractive financial package
Currently, the biggest difficulty for tourism businesses is still the cost of investment and application of digital technology. Not all business owners are knowledgeable about the digital economy, have a digital mindset to direct and orient their businesses to develop towards digital transformation.
The next step is to fully invest in and synchronize digital technology infrastructure in enterprises, which is also a big barrier. Because not all enterprises dare to boldly invest in digital infrastructure, while the results are not guaranteed.
The third difficulty also clearly shown in the survey is internal human resources to apply information technology. Hiring a team of experts to advise, advise, and implement technology applications in the company is a big problem. Especially in the context of the development of the digital economy, finding human resources who are knowledgeable about digital technology and pay high salaries only creates more pressure for small and medium-sized businesses such as tourism and travel today.
Currently, the tourism industry is being called upon and encouraged to transform digitally on forums and media. However, with the capacity of small and medium-sized tourism businesses, it will be very difficult to implement it into reality. At the same time, without any major support from financial institutions, or the state, central banks, it is understandable that digital transformation in tourism businesses is slow.
Therefore, to implement a smart tourism ecosystem, the government needs to build a sufficiently attractive financial package, apply low-interest loans to small and medium-sized tourism businesses, serving the digital transformation content at the enterprise. In addition, the government also needs to build a team of digital transformation consultants, to advise and guide any business that is interested and determined to digitally transform tourism products and services, creating new values and new experiences in tourism.
In addition, a complete legal framework and laws on digital transformation, ensuring business rights, ensuring an operating environment with low risks in technology, security, infrastructure and other conflicts of interest are also important in the story of smart tourism development.
Digital tourism is an inevitable trend of global tourism, but the approach and development need to be suitable to the characteristics of local tourism.
Digital tourism
VNPT Quang Nam representative said that the digital transformation trend of the tourism industry is gradually shifting from E-Tourism to Smart Tourism and these two trends have big differences. E-Tourism operates in the online digital environment; pre- and post-trip impact stages; limited interaction level, mainly passive one-way. Smart Tourism combines the digital environment and real experience; has impact before, during and after the trip; often has active two-way interaction.
Currently, the tourism trend towards personalized and friendly experiences is growing. This requires smart digital applications to provide optimal solutions for each group of specific needs of each customer file, based on the digitization of big data systems from tourism entities.
Mr. Hoang Quoc Viet - Chairman of the Board of Directors of Vietsoftpro Company (a company specializing in consulting on digital transformation of culture - tourism) said that there is no standard model when it comes to smart tourism or digital transformation of tourism. Many localities in our country also have different approaches. Technology is ultimately a means and the most important thing is how effectively we use that means for the local tourism industry.
Not outside the trend of digital transformation in tourism, in recent times, the My Son World Cultural Heritage Management Board has applied technology quite effectively in tourism activities at the heritage site, both helping to attract tourists and using technology to create valuable cultural industrial products to serve tourism activities.
Mr. Nguyen Cong Khiet - Deputy Head of the My Son World Cultural Heritage Management Board said: "Advanced techniques and technologies invested in the infrastructure system have really brought positive effects to tourism activities, optimizing them into products with smart digital applications.
From the detailed VR360 virtual reality website product integrating virtual commentary features, overview commentary, bringing the 3D model of the digital museum to the position of Map 3D Bizverse World, multilingual commentary product (Audio Guide) in 6 languages: Vietnamese, English, French, Japanese, Korean, Chinese. The products put into use so far have been satisfied and highly appreciated by tourists, not only in supporting information search about My Son but also as a truly valuable tourism product with high experience value.
Selective adaptation
According to a representative of the Quang Nam Tourism Association, major tourist destinations in Quang Nam such as Hoi An and My Son must thoroughly apply digital technology such as electronic cards and AI to manage entrance tickets, develop new digital tourism products, and increase the value of new experiences for tourists at tourist attractions or on digital platforms.
Meanwhile, at the national level, a tool to measure the added value of digital transformation in the tourism sector needs to be developed. Reviewing and developing new laws to ensure operations in the digital age, ensuring practicality and anticipating future technological trends is required. A stable legal framework and strict sanctions are in place, along with fiscal policies such as incentives to reduce VAT and turnover tax for businesses investing in and applying IT for digital transformation activities.
Regarding My Son heritage, Mr. Nguyen Cong Khiet informed that, aiming at the motto of "taking the experience of tourists as the center", in the coming time, in addition to traditional multimedia data (films, images, text, etc.), the smart tourism system for My Son will focus on building 3D digital data, e-books and virtual reality (AR) models.
Meanwhile, Mr. Hoang Ngoc Quang - Director of Sao La Consulting Company Limited (Da Nang City) said that the camera system that recognizes tourist density is an important part of digital transformation in the tourism industry today. The system uses image recognition and data processing technology to monitor and evaluate tourist density at tourist destinations.
“Monitoring visitor density at tourist destinations helps site management and tourism businesses understand the actual situation and reflect the needs of tourists. Accordingly, the use of resources such as transportation, hotels, restaurants and other services is more efficient.
This improves the tourist experience and improves security at tourist destinations by detecting unusual situations or security risks. In addition, tour management and operation systems or advertising product notification and presentation management software systems can also bring many benefits to the user in terms of trend analysis and promotion in the current digital age," said Mr. Quang.
In addition to the need to update trends to meet customer needs, the issue of human resources mastering technology also needs to be reconciled and adapted quickly.
Human resource training
Hoi An Memories Island (Cam Chau, Hoi An City) is a unit that exploits quality tourism services with many programs to attract tourists in recent years. This unit currently has about 600 employees, of which 90% are high-quality employees with deep expertise. The whole company is divided into 20 departments and up to 15 departments are strongly implementing technology applications in operation and management.
In particular, the sales department manages online booking sites (booking tickets via the internet), e-commerce platforms; the marketing department uses social networks, websites and content creation applications to bring the company's image to customers. In particular, Hoi An Memory Island's restaurant is currently implementing synchronous ordering of food and drinks through an online menu application in the form of scanning QR codes.
Each table will have its own QR code, customers order on their phones and the information is sent to the chef and the service department brings the food to the correct table for the customer. In addition, this company also controls the gate with electronic tickets, mobile ticket checking devices,...
Mr. Nguyen Xuan Ha - Head of Training and Quality Control Department of Hoi An Memory Island said that the whole unit is currently using 20 or more technology softwares synchronously. These applications are constantly updated and changed every day to adapt to the utilities and needs of customers. From here, the selection of input personnel of Hoi An Memory Island is also very careful.
Mr. Nguyen Xuan Ha said that in general, human resources must be able to react quickly to technology. After that, the company has a systematic training program, ensuring standards and proficiency in using software related to that job position.
"Most of our staff are locals from Hoi An and neighboring areas, so compared to big cities across the country, their foundation of technology skills is not very good. However, they are diligent, hard-working and eager to learn. After being trained by us, they quickly mastered the technology and applied it well to their work. Moreover, the software is constantly improving, so training for staff to apply technology is also provided every day. Optimizing the management, operation and customer service processes is a plus point that customers have given Hoi An Memory Island in the past time."
Nguyen Xuan Ha
Access on school benches
According to information from the Faculty of Economics and Tourism (Quang Nam University), in response to the digital transformation requirements of both education and the tourism industry, the Vietnamese Studies training program in the major of Culture - Tourism was recently adjusted in 2022.
The program focuses on introducing the latest content into teaching in the direction of digitalization and digital transformation. Specifically, for tourism professional subjects, from hotel - restaurant reception, desk service, room service, to tour guide service, all use simulation videos of the professional skills standards of Vietnam's tourism profession from major hotels...
This will help students visualize the work, use trial software of SMILE, OPERA on hotel management for students to practice operations and management in hotels - restaurants...
Dr. Nguyen Thi Vinh Linh - Head of the Faculty of Economics and Tourism said that recently, the faculty's lecturers have regularly updated the latest digital transformation resources in tourism as well as in society. The purpose is for students to be able to catch up with the profession and apply it to work immediately after graduation.
In addition, Quang Nam University supports lecturers to participate in training courses on modern teaching methods in the digital transformation era. For students, in order to access and learn content that applies technology, students are required to have electronic devices such as computers, smartphones, etc. that can connect to the internet. Some disadvantaged students will be given the opportunity to use the computer room in the library, open from 7 am to 9 pm from Monday to Saturday.
Except for the years affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the tourism industry to grow slowly, the rate of students from the Faculty of Economics and Tourism who have recently graduated and found jobs in their majors has recently reached over 80%.
At school, students have access to digital transformation application ecosystems in tourism such as hotel software, VR technology, sales software, e-marketing, etc. When approaching reality, students do not feel bewildered but begin to learn deeply to master the job.
"Through the survey, businesses feel very excited when receiving interns and trainees... because they have somewhat visualized the work and quickly adapted to technological advances in management and operation. Businesses highly appreciate the ability to access technology and adapt to the reality of work of students of the Faculty of Economics and Tourism" - Ms. Nguyen Thi Vinh Linh added.
Performed by: VINH ANH - SON THUY - QUOC TUAN - TAM LETTER - PHAN VINH
Presented by: MINH TAO
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