Over recent years, Da Nang has prioritised developing smart tourism, which can be simply understood as a kind of tourism that applies information technology to regular tourism activities. In the face of hard times triggered by coronavirus, smart tourism is believed to be an inevitable trend in the ‘smokeless industry’ in a bid to effectively marketing the city's products and services. 

Travellers visiting a local travel agent to find their suitable tours

In fact, such technologies as travel websites, social media and smartphones have considerably changed the way tourism services are provided. Travellers can now seek tourism information on multiple channels, so it is a must for travel agencies to make constant improvements to keep abreast of the new trend. Besides, travel agencies have to change the way they approach potential customers and create their new tourism products. They no longer need to conduct customer surveys in a traditional manner given the availability of new technologies while new technologies can be applied to bring new experiences to tourists and avoid lagging behind rivals.

In an effort to catch up with the upward trend, Da Nang has built its own apps or applied technologies to serve the increasing demand of tourists.

Many such locally-developed smart products as the ‘Chatbot’ and ‘Danang FantastiCity’ apps have been put into use and brought up a great deal of convenience to domestic and foreign tourists.

In particular, the new version of ‘Danang FantastiCity’ adds new outstanding features, including the ‘Event countdown’, which gathers all information about event headings, time and detailed schedules of each and every happening in the city, and the ‘E-coupon’- a promotion code used on mobile devices for hassle-free service order. 

Meanwhile, the Museum of Da Nang has well operated an audio guide for tourists visiting the museum in Vietnamese, English, and French, and a database of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. The audio guide can be accessed by smartphone using a Quick Response (QR) code. QR codes are positioned on the labels of exhibits on display at the museum, hereby serving to improve visitor’s ability to quickly and easily pull up extended information about the exhibits on display here.

The Da Nang Tourism Promotion Centre has cooperated with Kloock, which once became the most-searched travel activities booking platform worldwide, to build a media campaign to promote Da Nang to tourists.

At the same time, eye-catching photos and videos to promote Da Nang as an attractive destination in Viet Nam to visit are available on many travel apps including Danang Fantasticity, Tiktok, and Youtube.

Last year, Fayfay.com, a Hong-Kong-based e-commerce travel platform dedicated to local experiences in Viet Nam, entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Da Nang Tourism Promotion Centre to promote the city’s time-honoured history and culture, alongside its quality hospitality services, and authentic local tourism experiences.

Through the bilateral cooperative ties with Fayfay.com, Da Nang has till date reached out to more independent travellers, and help to promote it and Viet Nam as a whole to tourists through the organisation of joint tourism promotional events, roadshows, and media familiarisation trips over the past times.

In addition, the Centre has cooperated with Travelloka Vietnam to promote Da Nang through online marketing activities.

In June, the Centre and the Network of Indian MICE Agents (NIMA) jointly organised a webinar which aimed to promote Da Nang's tourism products and services to Indian tourists.

It is known that about 40% of the Indian tourist market is leisure travellers, whilst other 40% are MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conference and Exhibitions) visitors, and the remainder are wedding tourists.

According to CEO of the Songhan Incubator (SHi) Ly Dinh Quan, a number of apps such as IoT (Internet of things) create connections in the process of smart travel deployment, help to establish closer links between tour operators, functional management agencies and tourists, with transparent and interconnected information.

In his perspectives, Chairman of the Da Nang Tourism Association Cao Tri Dung underlined a need for tour operators and travel agents in Da Nang to promote the use of social media, online travel booking platforms, as well as seek out new technology approaches to bring their products closer to tourists.

By NHAT HA –Translated by A.T