Tourism spurred by e-commerce

Two industry leaders, Abacus and Hi-tek, are now pursuing ambitious programmes to offer both travel agencies and tourists across Vietnam new travel information services from next year. After operating for 10 years in Vietnam, Abacus Distribution Systems is studying the feasibility of its plan to help travel agents transition to internet protocol-based systems, as well as implementing a national IP solutions strategy by late 2006.

Abacus Distribution Systems managing director, Nguyen Thuong Thuyet, said the company would also unveil its HotelSmart product this quarter that lists hotels in 55 cities across Asia Pacific to allow travel agents to search and book rooms for clients. Thuyet said the product was capable of turning ticket brokers into travel consultant.

He said currently many domestic travel agents were unable to deal with inbound foreign tourists before they reached Vietnam, and had to leave many bookings in the hands of overseas-based travel agents. Abacus would promote its network to domestic travel agents, along with current clients including luxury hotels and airlines. Thuyet said Vietnamese people were also increasing travelling overseas and “with the IP systems, those agents could promote their outbound business too.” The US-based Hi-Tek is also eyeing the outbound travel business to provide information for Vietnamese travel agents, hotels and restaurants and foreign customers at its website: www.hotels.com.vn. Hi-tek eventually plans to upgrade the site to enable users to book online services including hotels, restaurants and other entertainment services, and two weeks ago started offering information about domestic travel agents on the site. Project manager Nguyen Thanh Tung said the website currently offered foreign tourists bookings at 204 hotels in Vietnam ranging from three to five stars and services of seven travel agents “The hotels would not face risks in this business,” said Tung, explaining that Hi-tek would be responsible for paying hotels for credit card bookings made by tourists. The travel data providers also planned to offer internet-based services when Vietnam’s internet connections are adapted for these requirements. Major constraints to internet-based services in Vietnam included lack of high bandwidth, low penetration and the high costs of high-speed connections.

Thuyet said Abacus intended to install a virtual private network to launch the service.

According to a World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) forecast, revenue from Vietnamese tourists holidaying at home and overseas could reach $6.4 billion per annum by 2014, consisting of 11.3 per cent of their total individual spending.

The WTTC ranked Vietnam fifth on the list of travel spending growth for the next 10 years, while the country was positioned 56th in its list of travel spending per individual, and 68th in terms of percentage of income spent on travel.

The country welcomed 525,000 overseas tourists in the first quarter of this year, a 37.2 per cent increase on the same period in 2004

Source: VNECONOMY