935428

research-article2020
JAS0010.1177/0021909620935428Journal of Asian and African StudiesHoang and Vo

Original Article
JAAS
Journal of Asian and African Studies

Travel Branding in Tourism 4.0:

2020, Vol. 55(6) 896­–909
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
Case Study Vietnam Travel sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0021909620935428
https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909620935428
journals.sagepub.com/home/jas

Hoang Thi Van

Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ton Duc Thang University, Vietnam

Vo Minh Hieu
Research Analyst, Outbox Consulting Co., Ltd, Vietnam

Abstract
A smart travel brand today is not only an advertising marketing channel but also requires businesses to
adapt and focus on brand value. Branding plays a role in shaping customer search behavior which means an
effectively personalized brand helps travel businesses find potential customers and develop specific services
to maintain business advantages. This article contributes some ideas about building a tourism brand today
that is personalized through story and awareness in the context of digital competition, where customers
play a central role both of providers of recommendations and consumers of the recommended story.

Keywords
Tourism brand personality, travel business, narrative, digital marketing, brand destination, destination
management, tourism marketing

Introduction
The branding of any product is representative of the product provider and so to be effective must
include charisma, quality, stories, and aesthetic value. The products offered through the branded
business are more often than not today more often than not today passed to customers through
online connections.
In the model offered by (Kotler and Issarapakdee, 2017), it is possible to see as well a slow
transformation of the “production-consumption” matrix of tourism and in speculative terms we
might set out a similar pattern in four stages:

 Tourism 1.0—travel arrangements were made by individuals of a certain class and compa-
nies like Thomas Cook and Baedeker emerged to capitalize on elite class expectations (the
tour as elite word-of-mouth recommendation about what was “done”) offering information
services and guidebooks for the consumption of elite travelers;

Corresponding author:
Hoang Thi Van, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Email: hoangthivan@tdtu.edu.vn
Hoang and Vo 897

 Tourism 2.0—the production of marketing for tourism was linked increasingly to mass mar-
ket communications media, guidebooks, newspaper and magazine advertising, and broad-
cast media, as Kotler says, while “travelers” distinguished themselves from tourists as
“authentic” rather than mass tourist, making their own way, speaking to locals as much as
each other, and writing and reading travel literature, diaries, letters home, and reliant on
word of mouth as to where to go next. Here tourists were consumers, but travelers were
increasingly producing (perhaps curating is best) their own travel experience;
 Tourism 3.0—initial development the “democratization” of word of mouth through the reg-
ularly updated guidebooks of Lonely Planet that relied often on travelers as writers, moving,
in the 1990s, into digital formats, identified by companies like Fodor who were pioneers in
pursuing connectivity alongside new online brands and agencies;
 Tourism 4.0—present-day emergent establishment of digital social marketing era, moving
word of mouth to online (making it measurable for the first time, with producers and con-
sumers increasingly being “the same” people), and using data mining to match customers
seamlessly with business providers, with enhanced competitiveness of aggregating service
sites themselves updates with content from consumers—recommendations and feedback—
as the business model of productive consumption.

In this brave new world of both tourism and technology 4.0 “our future will be a race between the
development of the power of technology and human wisdom” (Lộc, 2018: 15). We can see the
consequences of this development arc in Vietnam as tourism enterprises have gradually improved
the process of branding, creating media attraction and ultimately a personal social brand aggre-
gated through online platforms such as Vietravel, Saigontourist, and BenThanhTourist. These
aggregate providers have applied the strategy of an aggregate brand to consolidate individual tour-
ism businesses under an umbrella service linking customer search to specific services. Interestingly,
successful aggregators still must contend with the fickle character of word of mouth, but perhaps
today the sector relies more significantly upon the group of small- and medium-sized travel enter-
prises who strive to make a space in their markets. Smaller providers still certainly face difficulties
in creating a long-term brand and deciding how best to further their interests via recommendations.
How they do this, and what technology-driven strategies they use, is shaped by decisions about
whether they think they can best capture attention and cash in on “the economy of contribution”
(Stiegler, 2010: 117) by means of aggregation or by remaining distinct and uniquely identifiable.
This is a significant, researchable problem that this paper takes up with interest.
One method of measuring the influence of a brand is based on its personality. In our article, we
focus on analyzing the characteristics of a brand that has been ‘personified’. Our main aim is to
identify the aspects of brand personality in the tourism sector in Vietnam and the extent to which
this is really necessary in the context of technology 4.0. Our article has two main empirical com-
ponents: the first analysis shows the difficulties in construction activity of tourism branding for
travel companies in Vietnam. In the second part, we focus our analysis on travel brands currently
in the process of personification in this country. Finally, we do not aim to give a new measure of
brand personality, but to contribute to evaluation of the proposed model of Kotler et al., as it is said
to be suitable for the operation of dynamic brand personification for contemporary group travel
companies in Vietnam.

Brand and brand personality

The first kinds of brand, still used today, were those used to mark ownership of cattle or other
forms of livestock (Aaker, 1991). Today, the brand is understood more widely as a ‘name, term,
898 Journal of Asian and African Studies 55(6)

sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one
seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers” (American Marketing
Association, 2011). A brand is considered a combination of many factors, such as name, logo,
slogan, charisma, and its story over a certain period of time constitutes a living product that clearly
shows customers the material and aesthetic reasons to occupy a certain position in consumer con-
suming habits (Keller, 2001, 2003).
According to Keller (1993) brand image is the memory of the brand that is kept in the minds of
customers through brand-accompanying activities. Building and developing the brand will create
the attraction force that connects attachments from the brand to customers. Belk (1988) says a
brand is perceived as attractive when it helps customers express themselves, and when customers
think they share the same characteristics and personality with the brand. Recognizing the impor-
tance of branding, Papista and Dimitriadis (2012) say brand attraction is one of the factors that
have an important influence on the brand’s success.
Today, the brand is encouraged to build not only the product, but to present as if it were an indi-
vidual, with brand “personality” (Montoya, 2002: 81). Brand personality is a collection of human
characteristics related to the brand (Aaker, 1997). A brand builds its character, and trust, across
time, its lifetime. Character entails characteristics expressed in many lines of product which in turn
grows market share (Hawkins, 2001). The difference between competing brands lies in its different
personality (King, 1973). For example, Singapore Airlines brands itself as graciously friendly,
Mercedes as successful luxury, Pepsi as youthful. Brand personality is a general characteristic
foregrounding human traits and the qualities that, by analogy, the customers that use the brands,
will also enjoy (Kotler et al., 2016).
The personalisation of the brand in the field of tourism has long been prevalent in the world, but
remains still quite new in Vietnam. It is easy to see that Thailand successfully applied the person-
alisation of the travel brand with the logo and slogan “Amazing Thailand” with three campaigns
throughout: the “I Hate Thailand” campaign, the “Thailand Extreme Makeover” campaign and the
campaign to “Discover Thailand,” with each aimed at making visitors feel this national tourist
subject as a living personality and building faithful travel attachments (Nuttavuthisit, 2006).

The difficulties in the operation of brand development for tour

operators in Vietnam
From the perspective of the media and customers
According to statistics from the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, Vietnam in 2018 had
up to 2,178 active travel companies, an increase of 24.3% compared with 2017 (Vietnam National
Administration of Tourism, 2019). Ranked by type of ownership, limited companies accounted for
the highest number (62.6%) compared with the joint stock (36.2%), joint venture (0.9%) and pri-
vate (0.3%) (see Figure 1).
A study from an independent JSC Vietnam Assessment Report (Vietnam Report) combined with
VietNamNet and implemented an analysis of the business reputation of travel and tourism compa-
nies in Vietnam and some other issues. Research methods used media analysis to evaluate the repu-
tation of companies based on agenda-setting theory and the influence and impact of mass media on
the community and society (McCombs and Shaw, 1972). Accordingly, Vietnam Report used the
branch coding method (assessing the company’s image in the media) to conduct coding of articles
about travel and tourism companies posted on six influential media channels in Vietnam from
November 2017 to November 2018. In total, there are 363 articles, with 608 coding units (unit
encryption) assessed by story-level on 24 specific operational aspects of companies (from
Hoang and Vo 899

Figure 1.  Proportion of inbound and outbound tour operators by type of ownership, by 2018 (Vietnam
National Administration of Tourism, 2019).

products, business results, and markets, to the activities and reputation of company leaders).The
information was assessed at levels: 0. Neutral; 1. Positive; 2. Quite positive; 3. Not clear; 4. Fairly
negative; 5. Negative. In addition, evaluating the statistics again, the team made three ranks for
final evaluation, including: Neutral (including 0 and 3), positive (1 and 2), and negative (4 and 5)
(Vietnam Report, 2019).
From the research results of Vietnam Report (2019), the major challenges that the travel com-
panies in Vietnam encountered include:

•• exploitation of tourism resources is not commensurate with the potential available;

•• mobilized resources to support tourism development;
•• Lack of infrastructure, convenient traffic yet;
•• human resources are trained low, lack of professionalism;
•• limitations in tourism market research;
•• resources in capital and technology are very limited;
•• privacy in the construction and development of the brand.

The two challenges that directly affect the tour operators are that they are limited in market
research, tourism (57.1%) and capital resources and technology are still limited (42.9%) (see
Figure 2).
Constraints on tourism market research and the resources and technology of tourism are limi-
tations that stem from having to change rather than adapt to the digital world. This can take the
form of choosing to become a package tour manager, for example. The package tour business is
usually seasonal, and so where the problems suffered are negative (severe weather, economic
recession, epidemics, environmental pollution or insecurity-politics at the destination), the flows
of these companies will immediately have affected. The majority of tour companies in Vietnam
have focused on developing online platforms to capture insights from customers. So as the tour-
ism market has also been changed by the emergence of the Internet, so also has the Internet
helped the tourism industry expand the numbers of online travel agents but the online travel
agency has indirectly killed many of those who followed a more traditional business model for
tourism in Vietnam.
900 Journal of Asian and African Studies 55(6)

Figure 2.  The limitations and difficulties of tourism and travel in Vietnam in 2018—Unit:% (Source:
Vietnam Report, 2019).

Another result of the study shows that 85.6% of tourists look for travel information on the
Internet/electronic media, before consulting acquaintances and friends. This is a sign that media
competition in the tourism industry in the country will face many changes beyond 2020; travel
businesses need to have strategies to adopt digital technology and build core values to maintain
advantages and to compete. To build successful core values, among the solutions that businesses
will need are their own brand stories, so as to present themselves as trustworthy, attractive, and
encouraging attachment to customers who then come to rely upon recommendations from their
“personally” chosen and approved selection from among the many available online offers (see
Figure 3).
Customers who access tourism services now have more choices and comparison channels avail-
able via the Internet. Where marketing strategies have not placed customers in a central position,
they may feel they do not receive quality of service commensurate with cost and thus become wary
of such brands. In human-centered marketing, marketers approach customers through their mind,
heart, and soul. Marketing people need not only to meet the functional and emotional needs of their
customers but also to deal with the customer’s worries and desires (Kotler et al., 2016). Thereby,
customers set up communities on the Internet to exchange and respond. They use media as a
“weapon” to reinforce their alleged “god-like status” as the all-important guest. This becomes a
double-edged sword for travel businesses, with the possibility of either an oversupply of customers
and expanded revenue or an effective boycott.
Clearly, the role of the Internet as a site for sharing what previously was word-of-mouth recom-
mendations has skyrocketed. This was previously not measurable, but the new digital platforms
suggest that a “personalization” strategy for a travel brand would be to turn a brand into something
like an online person in society, making recommendations on the basis of a persona with elements
of origin, story, goals, and regular interaction with customers. Changing and influencing custom-
ers, brands present themselves as friends and as indispensable helpers in customers’ lives, and so
help manage competitive information overload and facilitate limits to negative communication.
With regard to the exploitation of customer information via Internet information channels
accounting for 85.6% (see Figure 3), travel businesses in Vietnam mainly focus on topic groups
with content related to photo/PR (25.3%) and price (21.6%) of package tours instead of providing
Hoang and Vo 901

Figure 3.  Channels search for information tourism in Vietnam 2018—Unit:% (Source: Vietnam Report,
2019).

Figure 4.  Top topic groups on Vietnam’s travel industry media in 2018—Unit:% (Source: Vietnam
Report, 2019).

topic groups with content related to building a business media image (see Figure 4). One weakness
of a travel company in Vietnam is that it only focuses on introducing products but has not studied
the customer perception journey to better understand their needs. In addition, customers start
searching for travel information on the Internet before asking directly from acquaintances and
friends. A large number of tour operators in Vietnam have not used Internet channels effectively.
This is contrary to the trend of technology 4.0, which leads to the revenue reduction effects of tour-
ism companies (Vietnam Report, 2019).

Personalizing brands to make the difference: Cases studies from some travel
companies in Vietnam
From research results taken from the Vietnam Report and VietNamNet, a list of the top ten tourism
companies, and tour operators by reputation in Vietnam in 2018 was announced. This list is built
according to three criteria (Vietnam Report, 2019) (see Figure 5):
902 Journal of Asian and African Studies 55(6)

Figure 5.  Top 10 travel companies, tour operators in 2018 (Vietnam Report, 2019).

•• financial capacity shown on the financial statements of the latest year (total assets, total
revenue, earnings, capital efficiency);
•• media reputation is evaluated by means of media coding: that is, coding entries about the
company on the media influence;
•• traveler survey and industry experts.

We would suggest that a success in the process of branding would be to turn a business brand
into a living, personified, and memorable brand persona, and that the persona is successful when
the brand can be distinguished from the range of other similar offers and businesses operating in
the same crowded field. Tourists in Vietnam and internationally can easily search on the Internet
for information on the 10 companies in the specialized site evaluating prestigious travel (company
information, service information, and customer opinions). The authors randomly selected 3 out of
the 10 travel companies and analyzed expert interviews to gauge their share of problems in brand
personification.

Case 1: BenThanh Tourist. JSC Ben Thanh Tourist Service (BenThanh Tourist) was founded in
1989, under the BenThanh Group, Vietnam. Since 1999, this company has been the Temple travel
brand in Vietnam in three domestic markets, inbound and outbound (BenThanh Tourist, 2019a). In
2009, the company officially changed its brand identity by adopting a lotus icon logo with eight
wings and the slogan “Journey to your heart” (see Figure 6). The company states its vision as
“BenThanh Tourist is the leading tourism company in Vietnam and Southeast Asia” (BenThanh
Tourist, 2019b). Their mission statement claims to “Always create value-added chains for diverse
products, worthy of customer satisfaction. Enjoy, relax, experience travel and life around the
world, by combining strong advantages of experience in the field of tourism, the professionalism
and prestige of internal human resources with the network of service providers of reliable quality”
(BenThanh Tourist, 2019b). This is indicative of an attempt to personalize their brand and appeal
to a romantic and wholesome, if somewhat corporate-looking, image—the color scheme is remi-
niscent less of a lotus than of the green and yellow logo of British Petroleum (BP), which is unfor-
tunate as the logo had clearly intended to allude to green credentials that BP as a company lacks,
so it cannot erase associations with the polluting oil industry—and no amount of green spectrum
logo can cover that up.
Hoang and Vo 903

Figure 6.  BenThanh Tourist logo (Source: BenThanh Tourist, 2019c).

Figure 7.  Vietravel logo (Source: Vietravel, 2019c).

According to Vietnam’s National Administration of Tourism, from 2000 to 2018 (eighteen con-
secutive years), the company was in the list of top 10 leading travel businesses in Vietnam in all
three fields of domestic tourism, inbound and outbound. The BenThanh Tourist brand logo appears
on the travel agency websites of countries such as Thailand, Korea, Japan, and Australia, as typical
partners. These are some tourist markets that have the leading number of tourists in Vietnam.
This tourism brand logo appears almost continuously in many tourism promotion activities of
destination management agencies in Vietnam such as the International Tourism Fair in Ho Chi
Minh City (ITE), the International Tourism Fair in Hanoi (VITM), and the International Tourism
Fair in Can Tho (VITM).
Currently, BenThanh Tourist has made many efforts in branding activities following the trend
of personalization with placing customers at the center of the travel service supply chain. Instead
of just offering customers traditional tour groups, it offers a series of tour programs designed spe-
cifically for each segment with the goal of improving personal experience such as Binh Lieu tour
(Northern tourism region, Vietnam), Tra Thien tour (Highland tourism area, Vietnam), Honey har-
vesting tour in U Minh Ha forest in Ca Mau province (Mekong Delta tourism area, Vietnam),
European Catholic Pilgrimage tours, and solo tours to Japan.

Case 2: Vietravel.  Joint Stock Company Tourism and Marketing Transport Vietnam (Vietravel) was
established in 1995, with plans to become one of the group of 10 leading tour operators in Asia and
a multinational corporation (Vietravel, 2019a). They associated their company with the slogan
“Asia Leading Tour Operator” express different marked the brand with three properties: The Pro-
fessional, brings feelings sublimated to customers and value-added attraction for tourist guest after
each trip (Vietravel, 2019b) (see Figure 7).
Similar to BenThanh Tourist, Vietravel has also had many brand promotion activities at promo-
tion events in Vietnam and internationally. However, since 2018, Vietravel’s business plan has
undergone many changes in brand development based on technology and business expansion.
Initially, the company pioneered the use of mobile payment when customers buy tours and other
services. Besides the plan to establish Vietravel Airlines as a charter airline, in 2019 Vietravel
904 Journal of Asian and African Studies 55(6)

Figure 8.  Buffalo Tours logo (Source: Buffalo Tours, 2019a).

officially introduces the online travel application Tripu.vn. This is a ticket booking system, with
hotel, tour, self-tour, experience tour, visa services, all online and at based largely in Vietnam. The
system connects over 2,000,000 hotels, 100,000 flights and 25 airlines services and Eurasian-
American visas (TripU, 2019). Their development strategy engineered Vietravel in a direction that
would change the habits and behavior of customers in Vietnam, from booking tours with an office
or agent to booking them online, and thus Vietravel accessed international tourists more readily
than companies that relied upon the old form of a traditional tour desk.
This travel application mainly focuses on four technical competencies: reward, personalization,
payment, and order. Service incentives, especially visa services, have become a tool to rapidly
increase the number of customers making this company the leading domestic and outbound tour-
ism brand in Vietnam. The collection and processing of customer data helps this tourism brand to
develop many groups of tour programs and offers that are tailored to customers.

Case 3: Buffalo Tours.  Buffalo Tours Vietnam was established in 1994 and currently has offices in
11 Asian countries. Buffalo Tours website has the slogan “Discover your Asia – A suitable journey
to discover your Asia” (Buffalo Tours, 2019a) (see Figure 8). Their vision is to: “Become . . . the
leading destination management company in Asia, connecting tourists with culture, environment
and local communities in a way that inspires and makes sense. We know that immersive tourism is
the future of travel and all of our products are designed to introduce customers to the true heart and
soul of Asia” (Buffalo Tours, 2019b).
Instead of competing with the trend for engineered products and tourism services, Buffalo Tours
chose to brand along the lines of a personalised local experience for customers (Buffalo Educational
Travel and Responsible Travel). Their strategy is to search for and advertize mainly to segment
customers more interested in experience and responsibility to the community as the point of their
travel. So this company aims to build and develop their brand as one associated with community,
“We partner with local communities to build supply chains to develop small economies in a respon-
sible and sustainable framework. We educate our guests and join the industry to prioritise conser-
vation of the environment and culture, making Asia an extraordinary destination to visit” (Buffalo
Tours, 2019c). This focus is easily seen where the customer of Buffalo inbound tours comes from
major European markets and North America. They tend to seek experiences through participation
in local communities as opposed to focusing on photographic activities or pleasure. Tourists want
to do what the locals do and enjoy food where the locals go.
Hoang and Vo 905

Figure 9.  Statistical reviews of Buffalo Tours according to traveler ratings from Tripadvisor data
(Tripadvisor, 2020a, b).

Branding activities that followed the trend of personification were built by Buffalo Tours
based on the experience and reviews that customers left expressing their feelings after a trip.
These assessments are based on a customer community of more than 600,000 people world-
wide (Buffalo Tours, 2019a). At the time of writing there are 1,872 Tripadvisor reviews (one
of the company’s official partners) from travelers in Vietnam for Buffalo Tours, of which
excellent reviews account for 85.0% of the total reviews (Tripadvisor, 2020a,b) (see
Figure 9).
Buffalo Tours effectively uses the policy of empowering customers to directly participate in the
branding process in the direction of personalization. On the website of this brand, it updates many
valuable customer comments from each service and tour program that the company offers. Here is
an example of a customer review provided from the Buffalo Tours website: “Thanks very much for
arranging a very enjoyable tour of Vietnam. We had a great time and all of the guides were very
helpful and responsible. All went quite smoothly. We very much appreciate the choices you made
for the tour. - Dan from United States” (Buffalo Tours, 2019a).

The brand personality solution for travel companies in Vietnam

Our proposal considers the success of a branding process to be its ability to easily reach a large
number of customers in one or more different markets, gradually creating a unique personality for
the brand. The brand that is widely understood is the one which shows the process of brand person-
alization. Success comes when brands make customers more often able to say what they saw was
impressive and what was easily distinguishable from other businesses operating in the same busi-
ness area within a certain supply range. Brand positioning requires the travel company to expand
brand visibility many times in terms of both space and appearance time, so that customers can
connect quickly. Customers find and use personalized products and services that match their inter-
ests and then choose their travel company on the basis of relevant information found on the Internet.
Nevertheless, many business companies are trapped in a competitive circuit, they passively adopt
the existing structure of the industry and hesitate to build brands because they think they are really
not useful and distract from a focus on competition. This becomes a main cause of failure (Kim and
Mauborgne, 2017).
906 Journal of Asian and African Studies 55(6)

Figure 10.  Utility map of buyers (Source: Tài, 2018: 170).

Any search to identify appropriate target customers requires insight and understanding, but it is
clear that analysis can proceed by many different methods. For example, using measurement meth-
ods through their “Utility map of buyer[s]”, Kim and Mauborgne (2017) offer an impressive pro-
posal. This utility map of buyers gives tourism companies an overall picture of the potential
customers that they want to exploit (Tài, 2018: 170). The map includes six rows (six phases of
buyers’ experience cycle) and six columns (six utility levers) (see Figure 10).

•• Customer productivity includes performance-related evaluation criteria (saving time and

costs) to satisfy customers’ demands.
•• Simplicity includes criteria for evaluating comprehension, popularity, and simplicity.
•• Convenience include criteria to assess the ability to respond quickly no matter what time
and place when customers need (24/7 services or 365days).
•• Risk mitigation includes safety, cost avoidance, and reputation-assessment criteria and
existing customer service.
•• Joy and meaningfulness includes evaluation criteria for brand identity and services atti-
tude of employees.
•• Environmental friendliness includes evaluation criteria from “green” and environmental
protection activities.

A travel company can use this map to measure visitor satisfaction across process criteria. When
measuring each criterion from top to bottom, they will need to mark which one is ‘O’ and which is
‘X’. The ‘O’ symbol marks the boxes whose products/services meet customer satisfaction. One
example can show that if the tourist is satisfied by the services attitude of employees when they use
tourism product of a travel company so ‘the number 17’ in the Figure 10 will be marked is ‘O’, and
vice versa it will be marked as ‘X’ if the tourist is not satisfied. From 36 boxes on the map, based
on the ‘X’ symbols, tourism companies will be able to circle the dangerous zones of the products/
services, and promptly find solutions to the problems. If more than 50% of the boxes are marked
Hoang and Vo 907

Figure 11.  Statistics brand personality (Source: Davies et al, 2018).

with ‘X’, the products/services of the company are genuinely alarming and there will be obstacles
in the attempt to personalize the brand in the future (see Figure 10). Based on this map, travel
companies can understand customer insight based on customers’ experience evaluations when
using their services.
After relying on the utility map of buyers to improve their products, travel companies can locate
potential customer segments. Based on this group of potential customers, they can establish a mar-
ket survey to gauge the personality of the brand from the customer’s thinking. There have been
many studies showing more than 10 groups of a brand personality (see Figure 11).
Individualized branding can be one of the ideal policies for travel companies operating in digital
marketing. For example, they can use Facebook or Google media messages (create ads) to reach
target customers, at the right time and place on a mobile device or laptop. Today, digital platforms
like Facebook, Google, Youtube, Zalo, and Instagram are not only a simple advertising channel but
also the life and the process of things that connect irreversibly.
In a market that is changing the company that is fastest to adapt will of course lead. Indeed, at
the time of writing the market is subject to huge fluctuations as Covid-19 has interrupted most
global travel, so much so that brands like Lonely Planet had to shut down offices in Melbourne and
New York. In an industry reliant on high-volume international travel, variation in demand means
that it is even more likely that alternative and bespoke travel itineraries, reviews, travel writing,
and branding that foregrounds responsiveness, will gain in favor.
A company like Buffalo Tours would be well placed to survive the disruptions of Covid-19 as
the tragic consequences of the global pandemic is likely to have the effect of encouraging even
closer relations between those who want to travel and alert travel companies. The leading compa-
nies will be those who can quickly learn, adapt, and work within new rules and regulations and
personalize their offer in a way that shows understanding and a can-do attitude. It is also such a
company that is well-placed perhaps to be assessing small-group and more “isolated”, or less
“mass tourist” venues. In the near future, it is likely that domestic travel will more be a greater
focus for aggregator companies while the international travel market adjusts to and recovers from
present and future disruptions.
908 Journal of Asian and African Studies 55(6)

Conclusions
Brand is a staple of customer spirit. Based on the “stories” told by the business, customers create
in mind a distinct character image about its products and services. In particular, during the Industry
4.0 period, many businesses empowered customers to build brands on the Internet. Therefore, the
brand is the way that travel companies create deep and flexible relationships with customers. Brand
personality and responsiveness is an integral part of brand management, which can be done by
positioning and integrating market communications through social networks and the Internet.
The aim of this study was to analyze the changes of Tourism 4.0 for tour operators in Vietnam
(Vietravel, BenThanh Tourist, Buffalo tours) and to evaluate brand personality. This involves
changes in measuring and researching customer behavior and placing customers and their chang-
ing needs at the center of the development strategy, and adjusting products and services for each
different segment. In particular, changes in customer access channels in technology and the person-
alization of user experience are considered a central method of brand personalization.
Finally, the proposals we offered in the solution section suggest a way that travel companies
may refer to their unique brand personality. However, this solution is only preliminary and is sub-
ject to unforeseen prospects. In the future, our later studies may be based on problems with brand
personalization in ways that can serve as a premise to build solutions for the tourism sector in new
and potentially more difficult times.

Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Author biographies
Hoang Thi Van is a Lecturer in Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Ton Duc Thang University,
Vietnam; is a PhD student of tourism; and has a master’s degree in International Tourism Management and
bachelor’s degree in Vietnam Studies. Her research interests include marketing tourism, destination manage-
ment, Vietnam tourism, and introduction to tourism.
Vo Minh Hieu is a Research Analyst at Outbox Consulting Co., Ltd, Vietnam, and has a bachelor’s degree in
Vietnam studies. Her research interests include destination management and marketing tourism.