HÀ NỘI — HI-TEK Inc officially launched its one-stop-shopping tourism website system worldwide on Saturday in Hà Nội through travel.vn, hotel.vn, vietnamesevisa.com and prebook.com.

The US-based company has applied blockchain 4.0 technology to successfully build the tools to allow online room and air ticket booking, which could connect to more than 800,000 hotels and some 150,000 air flights worldwide at websites www.travel.vn and www.hotels.vn.

Members of www.preBook.com could save 75 per cent on the prices for room and air ticket bookings. Moreover, Hi-Tek also co-operated with the Vietnamese embassies to the US and other countries to provide visa services for those entering Việt Nam, making the visa application process both simple and quick at www.vietnamesevisa.com.

Dr Lee Johnson, HI-TEK’s general director, said Việt Nam ranked 17th among countries with the highest popularity of internet use in the world, with 53 per cent of its population using the internet everyday.

Additionally, up to 90 per cent of visitors coming to Việt Nam search for tourism information on the internet.

“This would provide an advantage to tourism companies seeking to develop smart tourism, thanks to applications found in the achievements of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” he said.

The company said it would continue to invest in a cruise booking system, online ticket purchases for entertainment and culture, as well as car rental services, offering preferential prices for those using its system.

The system is expected to be strong enough to promote Vietnamese tourism throughout the world.

In 2018, HI-TEK targets to build a direct payment portal to reduce intermediate fees to save costs for tourists. It would also promote tourism lending to encourage visitors to Việt Nam, with support from the HI-TEK Travel Bank to attract more than two million Vietnamese living overseas in the US.

Statistics from the Việt Nam Administration of Tourism showed that the country received a record 12.9 million foreign visitors in 2017, a year-on-year increase of 29.1 per cent.

In 2017 there were 73 million domestic travellers, and total revenue from tourism activities was estimated at over VNĐ510 trillion (US$22.4 billion).

Currently, foreign online tourism agencies (OTAs) have been operating in Việt Nam, including agoda.com, booking.com, tripadvisor and Airbnb. There are also local firms entering the market, such as ivivu.com, gotadi.com, chudu24h.com and vntrip.vn. — VNS