At the end of the year, Ms. Phung Nguyen Bao Yen’s family (Trang Bom district, Dong Nai province) had a sightseeing and tourism trip in Can Tho city. Instead of spending a lot of time searching for information, Ms. Yen experienced the Can Tho Smart Tourism application on mobile devices “Can Tho Tourism”.
“I just need to use my phone to look up and exploit information about attractive destinations, accommodation services, cuisine, tourist maps as well as many other utilities. Thanks to that, I had a better quality trip,” Ms. Yen said excitedly.
Mr. Nguyen Minh Tuan - Director of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism (DTC) of Can Tho City - said that the city is currently promoting digital transformation, gradually innovating tourism promotion activities from traditional forms to using digital technologies. The city has directed investment, development of tourism products, apps, and activities to develop smart tourism.
“We have focused on coordinating with local tourism businesses, each with its own smart tourism products to connect with the Can Tho Tourism Portal, creating a smart tourism system,” said Mr. Tuan.
According to Mr. Tuan, businesses, units, people, and tourists inside and outside the city only need to access Can Tho's smart tourism system to learn, explore, and update destinations, relic sites, tourism events, tour programs, and tourist routes of the city... on that basis, it also creates conditions for people to access and come to Can Tho more.
Can Tho City's tourism industry has coordinated with VNPT, Viettel, and Mobifone to build and pilot many models of digital transformation in tourism activities.
In particular, building a pilot smart tourism system, focusing on 6 main contents including: Can Tho tourism information portal "canthotourism.vn", Can Tho smart tourism application on mobile devices "Can Tho Tourism", digital tourism map, analyzing tourist feedback on tourism on the integrated system, building a tourism industry database system, building an AI Chatbot system integrated into the portal and mobile application.
In particular, the smart tourism portal and application has integrated many new, modern features such as: 3D maps, VR virtual reality technology, 360 camera... Virtual reality technology helps visitors experience before visiting and acts as an assistant, a virtual tour guide providing information about the destination through audio explanations.
Smart travel helps travelers plan their itinerary, book rooms quickly, locate destinations, and navigate intelligently via interactive maps. At the same time, the smart travel assistant application supports multiple languages, helping to develop and promote effective content to different types of travelers in many different forms.
In the context of the 4.0 industrial revolution, Can Tho City's tourism industry has quickly grasped the trend, applied digital technology to develop smart tourism, bringing optimal experiences to tourists and improving the efficiency of local tourism management.
