Seeing Hue from above by 360-degree technology
Online travel amid COVID-19
While practicing social distancing to prevent and combat COVID-19 epidemic, Mr. Tran Viet Trung (Kim Long ward, Hue city) spent his time exploring various famous landmarks and tourist destinations of Vietnam and around the world aside from his usual daily activities, such as doing housework, watching television and listening to music…
As a travel enthusiast, being unable to travel, to Trung, is quite irritating, but he must comply. Thus, online travel is the way he chooses as he visits famous travel forums, websites and reviewsto collect information for his future travel plans.
According to Mr. Vu Van Chuong, Director of Proud of Vietnam-Hue Tourism Co., Ltd, with the support of technology of the 4.0 era, online travel is no longer just surfing websites, watching videos promoting destinations on YouTube, but there’re also experiencing, interacting through Virtual Reality (VR) applications, tourism promotion games; or joining in online exchange sessions with famous domestic travel bloggers on travel forums.
A representative of Viettravel – Hue Branch said that they have been creating various prizes-included promotional games for their customers such as making face-mask; showing off trophies with images recorded from tours; or promoting destinations through 360-degree images on the company's website. These activities received a lot of attention and interaction; it proves that there are potential online visitors even during a pandemic.
Mr Truong Thanh Minh, the Director of Hue Tourism Promotion Information Center, assessed that this form of tourism has already existed before, but it was the pandemic that gave it a boost to expand and gain more attention. Particularly to Hue, being gotten more searches will create a premise for the Ancient Capital to attract more tourists once the pandemic is gone.
Visitors leaving Hue after a tour
Proactively promoting Hue tourism
According to Mr. Truong Thanh Minh, besides focusing on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, the tourism sector still put great effort into introducing Hue on official and trustworthy onlinemedias. The cooperation between Hue and leading travel forums such as TripAdvisor, Traveloka… is also considered to increase the ability to promote Hue.
An app that has also been introduced in this period is using 360o technology to observe Hue city and various sites in Hue like the Imperial City, tombs system and Thien Mu Pagoda from above alongside short presentation for each location.
In addition, this application also integrates direction feature to the attractions for visitors. This is considered a full experience of Hue, even though the tourists are only sitting in front of their computers or their smartphones.
There’s also another app called Google Arts & Culture, which functions as an online museum, providing users with high-resolution images. According to Mr. Truong Thanh Minh, a 3D digitized version of Tu Duc tomb has already made available on this platform. As images of Hue and Tu Duc tomb are put on an app that has worldwide usage, surely the amount of people knowing about Hue will increase.
This is the time to strengthen the promotion of Hue tourism
Tourism companies are trying their best to keep their regular costumers by maintaining frequentconnection. Images of Hue, such as food or places that were on famous films are consistently updated and promoted on social networks and groups that have been previously established .... “The better the activities are being promoted, the more attention and awareness of potential customers they will gain. Thus, this will soon lead to the recovery of the businesses once the pandemic is over,” Mr. Vu Van Chuong expected.
A farewell party was organized for the group of British and French tourists who came to Hue at the end of March, 2020. They were not able to have the chance to explore Hue, but requested toget isolated at their accommodation as they were in close proximity with people infected with COVID-19, and then they had to return to their countries. As a farewell gift, they were given various promotional printed materials as a message inviting them to return to Hue whenever they have a chance.
Mr. Nguyen Van Phuc, Deputy Director of the Department of Tourism informed that the department has established a group to keep regular contact with these tourists even when they have returned home; at the same time, sending to them the official information pages on tourism in Hue, with a variety of tours for them to learn about Hue in this period. Through exchanging on groups, these visitors were quite impressed with Hue and said that they would introduce more about Hue to their friends and return to Hue in the nearest day.
Story and photos: Quang Sang