Online travel agency in Vietnam and its impact on your tourism trip (part 1)

Online travel is an inevitable trend when everyone can easily design tours such as buying air tickets, booking rooms, scheduling trips, etc. potential and challenges for the tourism industry to continue to upgrade digital technology platforms.

Online travel – New trend of the technology age

Online tourism, also known as e-tourism, is the use of digital technology in all processes and value chains in tourism, including travel, hotel, catering and transportation… so that tourism units and organizations maximize their performance and operational efficiency. The concept of online travel is a form of tourism that is strongly interactive business-to-business, business-to-customer and customer-to-customer, based on digital reach and technology platforms.

Currently, there are more than 2.5 billion people in the world connected to the internet via mobile devices, the service “Tourism and hospitality” is ranked second in the top 5 concerns of users of mobile devices. Smartphones and tablets to access the internet, 63% of tourists use smartphones to search for information and calendar services such as flights, hotels, car rentals and make service reservations through mobile devices. 72% of travelers expect business owners to make it easier for them to place orders over the phone, and 54% expect business owners to interact with them via mobile devices.

Online travel benefits the tourism industry as a whole. The dramatic increase of free and independent travelers (FIT) using online travel agencies (OTAs) and technology applications to plan their trips has changed dramatically. tourism market. Therefore, the world’s leading organizations and businesses have commented on online tourism’s development trend. UNWTO considers the technological revolution and the strong influence of social media to be an important factor in the rapid development of the tourism industry in recent years.

Google and Temasek Holdings of Singapore predict that the scale of online travel in Southeast Asia will increase sharply from 21.6 billion USD in 2015 to 89.6 billion USD in 2025. In, tourism online in Vietnam accounted for 10%, equivalent to 9 billion USD. In 2016, eMarketer estimates that global online travel sales will grow 13.8% and reach about $565 billion. The Asia-Pacific and Latin America markets contributed mainly to this rapid growth. The North American market is still the biggest online travel market of the year, but from 2017, Asia-Pacific will take the top spot. The rapid development of mobile technology and travel service providers has led to the expansion of the sharing economy. This is a profound impact on visitors in the Asian tourism sector.

Positive effects (opportunities)

Most of Vietnam’s travel businesses have actively participated in foreign OTAs such as agoda.com, booking.com, and expedia.com… Many large travel agencies introduce a large number of rich products with accompanying services. specific information about times, prices, services on their website. Thus, mainly small and medium, Vietnamese tourism businesses have a more equal opportunity to compete with foreign businesses.

Other transportation businesses such as Grab and airlines are increasingly improving their competitiveness through online utilities such as booking, booking, exchanging, issuing tickets and paying. According to Euromonitor International’s assessment report: the online ticket payment rate in Vietnam reached about 18.3% in 2010, increased to 22.6% in 2016 and is estimated to reach 29% in 2020.

In addition, tourism businesses have paid attention to IT personnel, especially, since some large enterprises have IT center to develop and apply IT for their businesses.

Negative effects (challenges)

However, the trend of online travel poses a significant challenge for businesses that do not change their IT-based management methods or manual methods in introducing and selling products. products or tourist attractions in Vietnam have hardly applied e-commerce. Or most of the tourism businesses in Vietnam have not yet successfully applied online payment methods but still apply conventional payment methods such as wire transfer, cash payment, etc. Thus, these units are mostly unable to compete in the new situation.

If businesses do not have enough funds to invest in IT systems, such as intranet systems such as LAN, WAN, Intranet, or apply unprofessionally in online marketing, such as poor, incompatible websites. Customer-friendly, smartphone-friendly, or increasing the efficiency of search engines SEO, SMO also causes a negative image for the business, counterproductive.
There is no small challenge for all types of tourist transport by boat, train, bus, etc., in the application of online booking and payment to improve the ability to attract customers.

12 online travel agencies for you

Currently, on the market there are many online travel agents, especially in recent times, witnessing the strong development of the travel industry as well as new technologies appearing. Below is a list of 12 online travel agencies that hotel managers can consider to increase awareness and bookings.

Booking.com

Booking.com is owned by the same company as Priceline, one of the oldest online travel agencies, founded in 1996. The company is based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and its website has Covering nearly 200 countries worldwide. Like other online travel agencies on the market, Booking.com offers users the ability to book motels, hotels, and other types of accommodation, while also providing price aggregation services. travel tickets.

Read more: The best tour operator for Vietnam in 2022/2023 (In review)

Expedia.com

Expedia.com is a travel booking service and online travel agency operated by the Expedia group of companies, which includes many other subsidiaries. Its headquarters are located in Bellevue, Washington, USA, and was founded in 2001. It is one of the world’s highest-grossing travel businesses and owns local sites in 40 countries. Customers can book hotel rooms, motels, B&Bs, flights, car rentals, and other fun activities and travel services. In terms of Marketing, it focuses on the advantages of cheap and competitive accommodation.

Hotels.com

Hotels.com is a service that allows users to book hotels, B&Bs, and apartments online. It is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, USA, and is owned by the Expedia group of companies. The platform operates on a global scale and most of its business model is based on repeat business. Most of what the company offers is located in “Hotel.com Rewards”, where users can receive a discount after every 10 nights stay at a place booked through the platform. Hotels.com is part of the Expedia group of companies, so your hotel will also show up on Hotels.com if it’s already on Expedia.

Agoda.com

Agoda.com is a global accommodation booking service based in Singapore. Like the agents on this list, it is also part of Booking Holdings; Booking.com’s parent company. The Agoda network offers users a choice between more than a million hotels or motels, focusing primarily on the Asian market, although it is also gradually focusing more on the European and American markets. In terms of Marketing, the company strongly emphasizes providing customers with incentives or cheap accommodation.

To be continued