Developing Smart Tourism in 4.0 Industrial Age: The Case of

Vietnam

Nguyen Thi Thoi

FPT University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Keywords: Travel App, Smart Travel, Industry 4.0, Self-Sufficient Travel.

Abstract: Smart travel is a result of 4.0 Era. In Vietnam, the applications of modern technology in the field of tourism

industry are being applied by many traveling businesses. Although new in this field, smart travel has achieved

certain achievements. Nowadays, the use of smart devices such as smartphones, Ipads, laptops to use online

websites, smart apps on CHplay app - Android and App store - Apple to follow, book services, plan a self-

sufficient tour are being chosen by more tourists for their convenience and time savings. The fourth industrial

revolution has had a strong impact on the tourism industry on a global scale in general, and Vietnam in

particular. Currently, the tourism industry is orientating and developing smart tourism models to provide the

best services to tourists, travelers, tourism businesses and tourism authorities. This research points out the

benefits of smart tourism applied in the context of Vietnam country, then, the paper aslo offers a few solutions

to develop this type of tourism in the 4.0 era.

1 INTRODUCTION

Industrial Revolution 4.0 creates a new face for

Vietnam's tourism. Not only introduce to foreign

visitors an image of Vietnam silver sea gold forest but

also connecting cultures around the world,

developing the country's economy. Currently, most of

the countries in the world are using tourism for

economic development (Huang et al., 2017). In

Vietnam, tourism is considered the most optimal

solution in the problem of international economic

integration in the industrial revolution 4.0. The new

era has brought a huge source of income for the

country's economy. However, the development path

of our country's tourism industry still faces many

difficulties and challenges. With the advantages of

geographical, economic and political location,

Vietnam is considered a potential land for tourism

development (Ozdemir et al., 2019).

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6033-4294

2 RESEARCH CONTENTS

2.1 Definition of Smart Tourism in the

4.0 Era

Smart Travel is considered as a new tourist trend, it

differs from traditional tours. Smart travel focuses on

your personal interests (Pencarelli, 2020). Not just

about convenience. Smart travel in the 4.0 era as the

most optimal solution for travel costs. Smart travel

here is means that tourists are more active in

calculating and planning specifically for self-

sufficient travel in a smart way and achieve the

maximum experience while the costs are minimal.

Tourism has a combination of technology elements of

travel-enabled applications such as intelligent

management software (Oztemel and Gursev, 2020).

For example, automatic explanation utility, online

tour guide management software, online booking

software, hotel navigation and search software,

entertainment area, and smart tourism is a new

tourism product in Vietnam developed on the basis of

applying achievements of advanced science and

technology and modern technology Ozdemir et al.,

2019).

Nguyen, T.

Developing Smart Tourism in 4.0 Industrial Age: The Case of Vietnam.

DOI: 10.5220/0010592804890493

In Proceedings of the International Scientiﬁc and Practical Conference on Sustainable Development of Regional Infrastructure (ISSDRI 2021), pages 489-493

ISBN: 978-989-758-519-7

489

2.2 Research History

Smart tourism is developed based on the application

of modern science and technology achievements,

especially multimedia communication technology, to

meet the diverse needs of tourists create the best

value, benefits, and services for travel businesses

together with tourism and community authorities

(Huang et al., 2017). The term "smart tourism" has

only appeared in Vietnam in the past few years, but is

mentioned a lot in the fourth industrial revolution

(Oztemel and Gursev, 2020). Based on the

achievements that smart tourism has brought to the

home country, the Party, State and Government of

Vietnam are very interested in and issued many legal

documents with the aim of meeting socio-economic

development and applying modern technology to

develop tourism (Pencarelli, 2020). The application

of prerequisite policies to clear and pave the way

creates conditions for a solid legal foundation for

innovation and development of smart tourism (Huang

et al., 2017).

It can be said that smart travel consists of three

main components (Hoi, 2020). The first is a smart

destination. It is an innovative tourism destination,

built on advanced technology infrastructure, ensuring

the sustainable development of tourism areas,

accessible to everyone, and facilitating the future.

visitor interaction and integration into the

surroundings, increase the quality of the experience

in the destination, improve the quality of life of the

people (Pencarelli, 2020). The second is the

experience of intelligence. These are seen as

technology-mediated travel experiences and

enhanced information exchange through

personalization, contextual awareness and real-time

tracking. The third is business intelligence ecosystem.

That is a complex business ecosystem that creates and

supports the exchange of tourism resources combined

with tourism experience (Ye et al., 2020).

Participants of this model are also smart travellers.

They not only consume, but also share and create

experiences, and take on a managerial and

supervisory role to ensure the perfection of their next

journey and other travellers Ozdemir et al., 2019).

2.3 The Advantages and Disadvantages

of Smart Travel in 4.0 Era

2.3.1 Advantages

There are many advantages and benefits that smart

travel brings with the nature of a “smoke-free

industry”, the first benefit tourists are most interested

in when traveling is travel cost. The e-commerce

industry is helping the tourism industry have more

opportunities to effectively promote and expand the

market, creating more attractive new tourism

products Ozdemir et al., 2019). Tourists will easily

grasp promotions for travel companies, hotels,

airlines, ships, and cars when there are special

discounts during holidays or summer, tourist

companies will regularly post on websites, fan pages

of forums such as Facebook, Instagram, etc. helping

tourists save 10% - 20% of the cost (Oztemel and

Gursev, 2020).

Figure 1: Ha Long Bay in the North of Vietnam.

In each tourist destination, there is an ideal time

for services, natural scenery like Ha Long Bay

(Figure 1), weather, etc. Tourists just need to have

smart applications like Skyscanner to help find flights

or find hotels via booking.com by comparing airlines,

hotels and giving suitable suggestions for tourists

such as tourists choosing Sapa highland as the

destination (Figure 2), the best time for the natural

scenery will be at the end of the year. However, with

the above time considered the peak season of tourism,

ticket prices and room rates will increase and the

application of the above methods will be used by

tourists and make they feel more satisfied and

confident with their trip Ozdemir et al., 2019).

Figure 2: Sapa Highland of Vietnam.

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Secondly, for travel agencies in charge of travel,

technology applications will increase efficiency for

management to create a form of "smart travel

management", businesses apply. Applying

technology, increasing the value of business activities

to create a "smart travel business", tourists apply

modern technology to support tourism activities to

create "smart tourists", a tourist destination applying

advanced technology creates" smart travel destination

to form “smart tourist city", "smart resort", here the

level of "smart" will depend on the scale, nature and

level of technology applied (Hoi, 2020).

2.3.2 Disadvantages

In addition to the positive aspects, the advantages that

the smart travel industry brings, there are still minor

shortcomings as there are now too many businesses

selling self-sufficient tours or informal travel

applications blooming day by day (Ye et al., 2020).

Advertising tricks to promote the truth. It has a

significant impact on the tourism industry, especially

travel businesses and reputable tourism applications

causing a current situation of distrust from tourists.

On the other hand, when travellers subscribe to a

travel app, they force travellers to share their location.

It will lead to travellers feeling like they are being

watched and personal information easily exposed

(Sari, 2018).

3 RESEARCH METHOD AND

RESULTS

The research method is done through data used in the

topic collected from the statistical reports of

Vietnamese organizations such as the General

Department of Tourism, the General Statistics Office,

the Ministry of Culture and Sports - tourism and other

prestigious newspaper sites named Internet.

Based on the total tourism revenue statistics of the

organization of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and

Tourism, the Vietnam National Administration of

Tourism gave the following results (Table 1):

Table 1: Total revenue from tourists for the period of 2016

– 2018.

Year Total revenue from tourists

(Vietnam trillion dongs)

Growth (%)

2018 637.000 17,7

2017 541.000 29,7

2016 417.27 17,5

Compared to 2016 with the total revenue from

tourists was 417.27 trillion VND, by 2018 the total

revenue from tourists was 637,000 trillion VND,

increasing to 219.27 trillion VN.

But in terms of the number of international visitors

to Vietnam in March 2020 wet reached 449,923

arrivals, a decrease of 63.8% compared to February

2020 and a decrease of 68.1% compared to the same

period in 2019 according to statistics (table 2):

Table 2: International arrivals to Vietnam in the first 3 months of 2020.

Target Estimated March

2020 (arrivals)

3 months of

2020(arrivals)

March compared

to the previous

month (%)

March 2020

compared to

March 2019 (%)

3 months 2020 over

the same period last

year (%)

Total 449.923 3.686.779 36,2 31,9 81,9

Generally, in the first 3 months of 2020, it is

estimated at 3,686,779 arrivals, down 18.1%

compared to the same period in 2019 due to the

influence of Covid19 (Table 2).

4 DISCUSSION

4.1 Approach for Developing Smart

Tourism in Vietnam

In the field of tourism promotion and marketing, we

expand the space, time and travel market. The

development of the Internet makes space and time

much more closer, creating a flat world, people all

over the world, only needs an internet connection to

be able to access and explore all the history

monuments, famous tourist attractions around the

world. This is an important push that has generated

travel demand for all people and is a golden

opportunity to expand the tourism market.

What we should do is to reduce advertising and

marketing costs if in the past, to promote and develop

destinations, it took a lot of time and had to pay a

large amount of money for advertising on television,

newspapers and radio; distributing leaflets,

brochures, maps, tour descriptions and prices per tour

are now through the application of smart websites

(such as Web30s, Smart Live Chart, Smart Marketing

Developing Smart Tourism in 4.0 Industrial Age: The Case of Vietnam

491

Tool) and virtual switchboards (all these software are

all running in the cloud environment) the cost of

advertising, marketing and time spent on it has been

greatly reduced. This is a great advantage brought by

Industry 4.0 (Nagy et al.,2018).

4.2 The impact of Industry 4.0 on

Tourism Development

Digitalization of tourism databases digitization of

tourism databases such as introduction of human and

natural tourism resources, tourist destination maps,

restaurants, hotels and systems The transportation

system of each locality, each country is being widely

deployed, bringing benefits to the managers, tourism

businesses and tourists all over the world (Sari, 2018).

Regarding the business of travel services, online

sales and online payment, e-commerce, online

business, including travel business, is now a trend of

the times. Industry 4.0 helps travel businesses to

deploy travel services to all people in need around the

world with the least cost, most time saving and

highest revenue (Huang et al., 2017).

Next is reducing labour force, time, costs,

reducing tourism service costs. The application of

modern technology has significantly reduced the

workforce, shortened the working time, sharply

reduced costs, and led to a decrease in the cost of

tourism services (Chung et al., 2017). Thanks to

online buying and selling, travel businesses can

associate, cooperate, share difficulties and profits, sell

goods to large numbers of customers, with little cost

and time so they can be much better relating to

pricing, discount, and even “shock” discounts on

travel services. The Internet has made it easy for

travel businesses to connect tours, destinations,

increase the number of tourists and increase tourism

business efficiency, turning tourism into an industry

with a continuously operating machine at full

capacity (Nagy et al., 2018).

Developing new tourism products with the current

status of industry 4.0 creates more and more new,

diversified and attractive tourism products. Industry

4.0, especially virtual technology allows the

reproduction of historical events, ancient cultural

spaces, majestic natural landscapes so that visitors

can experience and immerse in it, creating feeling like

real tourist spots (Yoo et al., 2017). Visitors who have

the opportunity to visit the Hollywood movie capital

can see all the virtual technology effects, irresistible

attraction of this famous tourist destination.

Improving service quality when applying Industry

4.0 with outstanding technological advantages, it

allows visitors to feel with all senses (hearing, taste,

smell, touch, perception, etc.); the visitors'

satisfaction will greatly increase. Therefore, Industry

4.0 not only reduces costs but also increases the

quality of tourism services in the field of training of

human resources in industrial tourism 4.0 which is

being widely applied in all areas of life, including the

tourism industry (Hoi, 2020). Therefore, tourism

training institutions - the machine of the tourism

industry also need to undergo drastic transformations

to adapt to the development of technology. Issues that

need to be renewed are to renew training programs

and textbooks, increase the duration of practice,

practical internships in enterprises. Improving and

updating the qualifications and technology of

teachers. Apply new technology in teaching theory

and practice. Students need to be trained in soft skills,

new technology application skills, communication

skills and foreign language skills in business activities

(Sari, 2018).

4.3 Current Smart Travel Application

Technology has become an indispensable part of life

in any way, and travel is no exception (Oztemel and

Gursev, 2020). In particular, smart devices and

applications will be tools to support tourism activities

such as navigation software (Google maps, Here

maps, etc.), hotel search through websites such as

(Agoda, trivago, etc.), online booking software such

as bus ticket, plane, train, etc. (vexere.com, elines.vn,

dsvn.vn) (Figure 3). We can easily find related

information such as where to go, what to do, what to

eat, what to play through websites such as Facebook,

Qzone, Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter (Hoi, 2020).

Figure 3: Smart navigation application.

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Today, there are also many companies applying

smart travel to travel business to help diversify

customers. Tourists do not need to go to companies to

book tours directly, do not need to go in groups or

groups with limited time (Chung et al., 2017). Only

just by one click, tourists have had their own personal

preference travel, self-sufficient but it does not take

too much time to think and can plan the cost of the

journey by themselves, for example, triphunter.vn,

Rome2Rio, Google Trips, and TripAdvisor.

5 SOME SOLUTIONS TO

PROMOTE SMART TOURISM

DEVELOPMENT IN VIETNAM

Currently, Vietnam is promoting the development of

smart tourism to make it a key economic sector by

taking a variety of ways. In particular, the promotion

of technology application, implementation of

measures to stimulate tourism demand, training

human resources are the policies that are gradually

being implemented (Hoi, 2020). Investment in

information technology development can create

opportunities for travel businesses to develop

applications. Building smart tourism helps promote

tourism areas, increase visitor access and interaction,

and convenient payment to diversify types, products

and services to attract domestic and foreign tourist’s

country (Ye et al., 2020).

In order to develop tourism into a spearhead

economic sector, it is necessary to synchronously

implement many solutions, of which there must be

solutions to promote the application of modern

science and technology Ozdemir et al., 2019). The

State has a policy to encourage and support the

application of modern science and technology to

tourism management and development.

6 CONCLUSION

Smart tourism development in the 4.0 era creates

important knowledge in the operation and

management of smart travel, and provides deeper

insights into how information and communication

technology can be used to reforming strategies,

enhancing travel experiences and co-creating new

modern tourism experiences. In the future, along with

new technologies and digital transformation that

impact the dynamic transformation of processes in

society, new opportunities in smart travel strategy

development. Therefore, information and

communication technology infrastructure plays a

decisive role in the success of tourism businesses and

applications as well as increasing the competitiveness

of travel businesses. With the traditional tourism

industry dependent on services (travel agencies,

restaurants, and hotels), instead it is the smart tourist

experience empowered by technology, in which

technology plays an important role in all stages of the

travel process. Besides, modern technology is also a

medium to co-create travel experiences. The

development of smart applications for smart travel is

also a strategy and dynamic cooperation among

stakeholders to ensure innovation and sustainability

of smart tourism development in Great 4.0.

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