Vietnam's online travel poised for growth

Vietnam's online travel poised for growth, says Buffalo Tours' Kien Posted on 17 May 2011 at 05:14 am by Yeoh Siew Hoon Recently, Wotif Group signed a joint venture with Thien Minh Group which will see the two parties establish an OTA under the brand of iviVu. WIT interviews Tran Trong Kien, a medical doctor turned travel entrepreneur, and founder of Buffalo Tours in Vietnam and Indochina. Q: What was the intention when you set up IviVu? While online travel distribution is still in its infancy in Vietnam and indeed in Indochina, there are some good signs to predict sustainable growth in the coming years. • Together with inbound arrivals, domestic and outbound travel is growing rapidly reaching over 30 million trips in 2011 • Internet penetration is pretty high (over 20 million internet users in Vietnam) • Good increase in credit card users (about two million now) • Hotels want to diversify their distribution channels and there are a lot of small hotels • There is no serious player yet in the OTA market servicing the local consumers. Changes are rapid and we believe online distribution will become an important channel. Perhaps reaching 10-15% in the next three to five years. Q: Why did you enter this JV? What do u hope to achieve? We realized that we needed technology, technical knowhow and world's best practices to succeed. A JV is like a marriage, we need someone we could work with for a long time, shared values and a company with similar culture. We are very pleased that we met Wotif Group. It will be a long journey but we want to be the best Vietnamese OTA with the largest trunk of market share in Vietnam and Indochina. Q: Tell me a little about how you got into travel – I heard you were guiding tours in Hanoi and then you set up Buffalo Tours? I was doing my last couple of years at Hanoi Medical School and needed a part time job in the summers. I enjoyed the work as a tour guide so much that after I graduated as a GP, I started Buffalo Tours. Q: Has it been tough establishing and growing Buffalo Tours? What makes BT different from other ground operators in Vietnam? Starting up is always difficult. It is even more so if you have no experience. We survived the first few years through hard work, creativity and courage. Buffalo Tours is unique because it is one of the few independent regional tour operators (we have our owned operations in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos and our own sales offices in London, Sydney). It is still locally owned with its unique culture (young, resilient, innovative, courageous, offering highest quality but still having funs and pretty efficient). We focus a lot on product and service differentiations and nurture a pool of exceptional staff. Q: Currently Chudu seems to be the only OTA - focused on hotel rooms. Will ivivu be focused only on hotel rooms as well or will it also have ground content and leverage its relationship with Buffalo Tours? And also Victoria Hotels which your company bought? There are many smaller portals in Vietnam created by entrepreneurs who are inspired by successes of Expedia, Ctrip, Wotif. There are a lot below the tip of the iceberg. To be truly successful online, you must have a clear value proposition for your customers and can make sure we deliver them well. That sounds simple but not easy to do. Our value is Vietnamese customers could book any hotel of our 18,000 domestic and global hotels, any time and get real time confirmation, real time customer service in our own langue and with flexible payment options.