Online Tourism Day 2017 set for July 5

The Day is being held to connect tourism enterprises with others in sectors such as IT, online marketing, online payments, insurance, and aviation.

It will focus on four main themes: Online Tourism - an irreversible trend, Online Travel Agents - who is stronger?, Online Tourism - starting from enterprises, and tourism development in the digital era.

Discussions will focus on the inevitable development of online tourism, related policies, the impact of IT on tourism, business activities of domestic and international travel agents in online tourism, and deploying IT and e-commerce at every travel agency.

Online Tourism Day 2017 will provide a forum for hoteliers, travel agents, restaurants, and entertainment, transport, and insurance companies to meet and discuss business possibilities. State managers will also be able to research online tourism and stay abreast of its development.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh Huong, Deputy Director of VNAT, said that the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) pointed out in a 2016 report that tourism in the Asia-Pacific region grew at the strongest rate in the world. Factors such as population, income, mobile technology, and social media have had major impacts on tourism in the region.

However, a shortage of human resources is a major challenge for development in the immediate future.

The Politburo issued Decree No.08 this year, calling for tourism to become a key economic sector, and the National Assembly passed the amended Law on Tourism in June.

The sector will propose the government issue policies and solutions to develop tourism in the future, with online tourism and new tourism trends in need of attention to make it a key economic sector by 2030.

Global online tourism increased 13.8 per cent in 2016, to $565 billion. Asia-Pacific and Latin America contributed the most to growth. North America was the largest online tourism market, but Asia Pacific is expected to be the largest this year.

Online tourism in many countries is assessed as growing faster the previously predicted. In Southeast Asia, Google forecast that the scale of online tourism will grow from $22 billion in 2015 to $90 billion in 2025.

Tourism has been significantly impacted by IT developments such as mobile technology, cloud computing, big data, the sharing economy, the Internet of Things, and the fourth industrial revolution.