A WEB APPLICANTION FOR THE TOURISM INDUSTRY IN HANOI
by
Dinh Huu Son
A research study submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of
Business Administration
Examination Committee: Dr. Clemens Bechter (Chairman)
Dr. Truong Quang
Dr. Hans Stoessel
Nationality: Vietnamese
Previous Degree: Bachelor of Civil Engineering
Hanoi Construction College
Hanoi, Vietnam
Scholarship Donor: Government of Switzerland
Asian Institute of Technology
School of Management
Bangkok, Thai land
April, 2001
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Acknowledgement
I would like to express my sincere thankfulness to my research advisor Dr. Bechter Clemens for
his invaluable advice and encouragement through out the research work. I also highly
appreciate the research examination of Dr. Truong Quang and Dr. Hans Stoessel as well as their
helpful and innovative ideas to enhance the value of the research.
Now that I have finished the application, it’s time to stop for a moment to reflect and
acknowledge those people who have made this research possible and successful.
First of all, the most important thanks is due to Dr. Hans Stoessel and others in Swiss Vietnam
AIT Management Development Program and Swiss Government who gave financial support to
my study in AIT.
When I think of one-year period living in AIT, I can not help but think of my family for their
support and encouragement through my study in terms of both finance and mentality.
I would like to express the deepest thanks and appreciation to my closest friend for her

1.5.2 Web development tools/languages...................................................................................................3
1.6 LIMITATIONS OF THE RESEARCH...............................................................................................................4
1.7 ORGANIZATION OF THE RESEARCH...........................................................................................................4
2. 2 LITERATURE REVIEW....................................................................................................................................5
2.1 INTERNET AND ECOMMERCE.....................................................................................................................5
2.1.1 Internet history................................................................................................................................5
2.1.2 Commerce.....................................................................................................................................12
2.1.3 Internet E-commerce overview......................................................................................................15
2.1.4 Benefits of Internet for E-commerce..............................................................................................16
2.1.5 Trading environment.....................................................................................................................18
2.1.6 Applications of E-commerce..........................................................................................................23
2.1.7 Levels of internet exploitation........................................................................................................23
2.1.8 Towards E-payments.....................................................................................................................24
2.2 INTERNET IN VIETNAM...........................................................................................................................27
2.3 OVERVIEW OF LANGUAGES AND TOOLS USED FOR THE APPLICATION....................................................27
2.3.1 Hyper text markup language (html)...............................................................................................27
2.3.2 Active server pages (asp)...............................................................................................................28
2.3.3 Javascript......................................................................................................................................29
2.3.4 Microsoft access............................................................................................................................30
2.3.5 Dreamweaver 4.0 ..........................................................................................................................30
2.3.6 Dreamweaver UltraDev.................................................................................................................31
2.3.7 Photoshop......................................................................................................................................31
2.3.8 Fireworks.......................................................................................................................................31
3. 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY......................................................................................................................32
3.1 PROCESS.................................................................................................................................................32
3.2 EXPLANATION OF THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY..................................................................................32
3.3 TARGET GROUP.......................................................................................................................................33
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3.4 ATTRIBUTES............................................................................................................................................34
3.4.1 For general Internet Surfers..........................................................................................................34

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Chapter 1
1 Introduction
1.1 Background
1.1.1 Tourism industry in Vietnam
In developing countries, tourism industry is often one of the important most industries that
attract large amounts of hard currencies from more developed countries. On the way of
development, VN is no exception. In early 1990s to the mid of the decade, the number of
tourists coming to Vietnam increased by 30 percents. However, there was a decline of 10
percent from 1997 to 1999. There are several causes that are clear:
• Infrastructure of tourism industry in Vietnam is not as good as those of other countries in
region. Low quality service could be found everywhere.
• Lack of information or instructions to places of beauty that tourists want to go
• External causes like starting effects of the financial crisis in Asia and the declining of
other currencies in the region, making it expensive to go to Vietnam.
Yet, tourism industry is coming back to be attractive in the year 2000 with the number of
tourists increased by 15 percent.
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1.1.2 Internet in Vietnam
Internet network was launched in December 1997. There has been 5 ISP so far including
VNPT/VDC, FPT, Saigon Postel, Netnam and Vietel. The number of ICP is 15 providing
mainly public medium of the Internet. The number of Internet users is growing fast including
both individual users and enterprise side. With the amazing development of telephone,
internet has been, is and is going to be a vital means of communication, of resource
exchanging and most importantly, of doing business in Vietnam.
1.1.3 Level of participating in E-commerce of tourism companies
At the current, there are some reasons that make the Internet unattractive to the tourism
companies as lacking information and technical skill. As the result of unawareness of the
opportunities from the Internet, the level of utilization of the new media stayed at the email
and some advertisement with low information content from companies’ websites. But what

• Survey all service available; list important places with essential information including
historical places, entertainment locations (in Hotel category, list all big hotels with
number of rooms, room rates, address, etc.)
• Develop a website providing the above information. Tailor to suit the needs of both short-
time tourists and permanent investors
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1.4 Scope of study
The research/project mainly focuses on tourism industry in Hanoi. Survey is done to
understand the most important needs of tourists/ investors. Then, another intensive survey is
carried out to see what is available in Hanoi. Matching demand with supply is achieved by
the creation of a Website that provides information about Hanoi such as information about
historic places, hotels, restaurants, discotheques, supermarkets etc. More importantly, the
website makes it possible for visitors to book online some of those services.
1.5 Methodology
1.5.1 Survey methodology
An in-depth pilot interview is carried out first to understand general needs of a typical short-
time tourist and a typical permanent investor. There are 15 in each category to be
interviewed. So, there should be a total number of 30 people to take part in this study. All
these people are selected arbitrarily.
For understanding services available in Hanoi, secondary data is best. Sources of
information can be taken from magazines, newspapers and the yellow book. Information
from pilot interview may be useful for this part. However, it is necessary to validate all this
information by contacting directly by telephone and site-surveying.
Further, I carried out a small qualitative survey of officials in the tourism industry in Hanoi.
The sample size is only 15. As mentioned above, the sample size for qualitative work is
usually small because we do not need to have too accurate result while spending lots of time.
1.5.2 Web development tools/languages
There are several tools/languages used in the website development. Here is the list of most of
them. More are added later
• Hyper text markup language (html)

Chapter 2
2 Literature Review
2.1 Internet and Ecommerce
2.1.1 Internet history
The Internet has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing before.
The invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio, and computer set the stage for this
unprecedented integration of capabilities. The Internet is at once a world-wide broadcasting
capability, a mechanism for information dissemination, and a medium for collaboration and
interaction between individuals and their computers without regard for geographic location.
The Internet represents one of the most successful examples of the benefits of sustained
investment and commitment to research and development of information infrastructure.
Beginning with the early research in packet switching, the government, industry and academia
have been partners in evolving and deploying this exciting new technology. Today, terms like
"" and "" trip lightly off the tongue of the random
person on the street. This is intended to be a brief, necessarily cursory and incomplete history.
Much material currently exists about the Internet, covering history, technology, and usage. A
trip to almost any bookstore will find shelves of material written about the Internet.
The Internet today is a widespread information infrastructure, the initial prototype of what is
often called the National (or Global or Galactic) Information Infrastructure. Its history is
complex and involves many aspects - technological, organizational, and community. And its
influence reaches not only to the technical fields of computer communications but throughout
society as we move toward increasing use of online tools to accomplish electronic commerce,
information acquisition, and community operations. Now, lets go back step by step to the
history of internet.
The first recorded description of the social interactions that could be enabled through
networking was a series of memos written by J.C.R. Licklider of MIT in August 1962
discussing his "Galactic Network" concept. He envisioned a globally interconnected set of
computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site. In
spirit, the concept was very much like the Internet of today. Licklider was the first head of the
computer research program at DARPA, starting in October 1962. While at DARPA he

economics were designed and optimized by Roberts working with Howard Frank and his team
at Network Analysis Corporation, and the network measurement system was prepared by
Kleinrock's team at UCLA.
Due to Kleinrock's early development of packet switching theory and his focus on analysis,
design and measurement, his Network Measurement Center at UCLA was selected to be the
first node on the ARPANET. All this came together in September 1969 when BBN installed
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the first IMP at UCLA and the first host computer was connected. Doug Engelbart's project
on "Augmentation of Human Intellect" (which included NLS, an early hypertext system) at
Stanford Research Institute (SRI) provided a second node. SRI supported the Network
Information Center, led by Elizabeth (Jake) Feinler and including functions such as
maintaining tables of host name to address mapping as well as a directory of the RFC's. One
month later, when SRI was connected to the ARPANET, the first host-to-host message was
sent from Kleinrock's laboratory to SRI. Two more nodes were added at UC Santa Barbara
and University of Utah. These last two nodes incorporated application visualization projects,
with Glen Culler and Burton Fried at UCSB investigating methods for display of
mathematical functions using storage displays to deal with the problem of refresh over the
net, and Robert Taylor and Ivan Sutherland at Utah investigating methods of 3-D
representations over the net. Thus, by the end of 1969, four host computers were connected
together into the initial ARPANET, and the budding Internet was off the ground. Even at this
early stage, it should be noted that the networking research incorporated both work on the
underlying network and work on how to utilize the network. This tradition continues to this
day.
Computers were added quickly to the ARPANET during the following years, and work
proceeded on completing a functionally complete Host-to-Host protocol and other network
software. In December 1970 the Network Working Group (NWG) working under S. Crocker
finished the initial ARPANET Host-to-Host protocol, called the Network Control Protocol
(NCP). As the ARPANET sites completed implementing NCP during the period 1971-1972,
the network users finally could begin to develop applications.
In October 1972 Kahn organized a large, very successful demonstration of the ARPANET at

accordance with the specific environment and user requirements of that network. There are
generally no constraints on the types of network that can be included or on their geographic
scope, although certain pragmatic considerations will dictate what makes sense to offer.
The idea of open-architecture networking was first introduced by Kahn shortly after having
arrived at DARPA in 1972. This work was originally part of the packet radio program, but
subsequently became a separate program in its own right. At the time, the program was called
"Internetting". Key to making the packet radio system work was a reliable end-end protocol
that could maintain effective communication in the face of jamming and other radio
interference, or withstand intermittent blackout such as caused by being in a tunnel or blocked
by the local terrain. Kahn first contemplated developing a protocol local only to the packet
radio network, since that would avoid having to deal with the multitude of different operating
systems, and continuing to use NCP.
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However, NCP did not have the ability to address networks (and machines) further
downstream than a destination IMP on the ARPANET and thus some change to NCP would
also be required. (The assumption was that the ARPANET was not changeable in this regard).
NCP relied on ARPANET to provide end-to-end reliability. If any packets were lost, the
protocol (and presumably any applications it supported) would come to a grinding halt. In this
model NCP had no end-end host error control, since the ARPANET was to be the only
network in existence and it would be so reliable that no error control would be required on the
part of the hosts.
Thus, Kahn decided to develop a new version of the protocol which could meet the needs of
an open-architecture network environment. This protocol would eventually be called the
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). While NCP tended to act like a
device driver, the new protocol would be more like a communications protocol.
Kahn began work on a communications-oriented set of operating system principles while at
BBN and documented some of his early thoughts in an internal BBN memorandum entitled
"Communications Principles for Operating Systems". At this point he realized it would be
necessary to learn the implementation details of each operating system to have a chance to
embed any new protocols in an efficient way. Thus, in the spring of 1973, after starting the

MIT set out to show that a compact and simple implementation of TCP was possible. They
produced an implementation, first for the Xerox Alto (the early personal workstation
developed at Xerox PARC) and then for the IBM PC. That implementation was fully
interoperable with other TCPs, but was tailored to the application suite and performance
objectives of the personal computer, and showed that workstations, as well as large time-
sharing systems, could be a part of the Internet. In 1976, Kleinrock published the first book on
the ARPANET. It included an emphasis on the complexity of protocols and the pitfalls they
often introduce. This book was influential in spreading the lore of packet switching networks
to a very wide community.
Widespread development of LANS, PCs and workstations in the 1980s allowed the nascent
Internet to flourish. Ethernet technology, developed by Bob Metcalfe at Xerox PARC in 1973,
is now probably the dominant network technology in the Internet and PCs and workstations
the dominant computers. This change from having a few networks with a modest number of
time-shared hosts (the original ARPANET model) to having many networks has resulted in a
number of new concepts and changes to the underlying technology. First, it resulted in the
definition of three network classes (A, B, and C) to accommodate the range of networks.
Class A represented large national scale networks (small number of networks with large
numbers of hosts); Class B represented regional scale networks; and Class C represented local
area networks (large number of networks with relatively few hosts).
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A major shift occurred as a result of the increase in scale of the Internet and its associated
management issues. To make it easy for people to use the network, hosts were assigned
names, so that it was not necessary to remember the numeric addresses. Originally, there were
a fairly limited number of hosts, so it was feasible to maintain a single table of all the hosts
and their associated names and addresses. The shift to having a large number of
independently managed networks (e.g., LANs) meant that having a single table of hosts was
no longer feasible, and the Domain Name System (DNS) was invented by Paul Mockapetris
of USC/ISI. The DNS permitted a scalable distributed mechanism for resolving hierarchical
host names (e.g. www.acm.org) into an Internet address.
The increase in the size of the Internet also challenged the capabilities of the routers.

used by a significant number of defense R&D and operational organizations. The transition of
ARPANET from NCP to TCP/IP permitted it to be split into a MILNET supporting
operational requirements and an ARPANET supporting research needs.
Thus, by 1985, Internet was already well established as a technology supporting a broad
community of researchers and developers, and was beginning to be used by other
communities for daily computer communications. Electronic mail was being used broadly
across several communities, often with different systems, but interconnection between
different mail systems was demonstrating the utility of broad based electronic
communications between people.
The recent development and widespread deployment of the World Wide Web has brought
with it a new community, as many of the people working on the WWW have not thought of
themselves as primarily network researchers and developers. A new coordination organization
was formed, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Initially led from MIT's Laboratory
for Computer Science by Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the WWW) and Al Vezza, W3C
has taken on the responsibility for evolving the various protocols and standards associated
with the Web.
Thus, through the over two decades of Internet activity, we have seen a steady evolution of
organizational structures designed to support and facilitate an ever-increasing community
working collaboratively on Internet issues.
2.1.2 Commerce
The meaning of commerce as follows:
Commerce n [MF, fr. L commercium, fr. com- + merc-, merx merchandise] (1537)
• The exchange or buying and selling of commodities on a large scale involving
transportation from place to place
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The commerce is, quite simply, the exchange of goods and services, usually for money. We
see commerce all around us in in millions of different forms. When you buy something at a
grocery store or at Wal-mart you are participating in commerce. In the same way, if you cart
half of your possessions onto your front lawn for a yard sale, you are participating in
commerce from a different angle. If you go to work each day for a company that produces a

traditional mail order company is the combination of an address or a catalog and a phone
number or a mail box.
You need to figure out a way to get people to come to your place. This process is known as
marketing. If no one knows that your place exists, you will never sell anything. Locating your
place in a busy shopping center is one way to get traffic. Sending out a mail order catalog is
another.
There is also advertising, word of mouth and even the guy in a chicken suit who stands by the
road waving at passing cars! You need a way to accept orders. At Wal-mart this is handled by
the check out line. In a mail order company the orders come in by mail or phone and are
processed by employees of the company. You also need a way to accept money. If you are at
Wal-mart you know that you can use cash, check or credit cards to pay for products.
Business-to-business transactions often use purchase orders. Many businesses do not require
you to pay for the product or service at the time of delivery, and some products and services
are delivered continuously (water, power, phone and pagers are like this). That gets into the
whole area of billing and collections.
You need a way to deliver the product or service, often known as fulfillment. At a store like
Wal-mart fulfillment is automatic. The customer picks up the item of desire, pays for it and
walks out the door. In mail-order businesses the item is packaged and mailed. Large items
must be loaded onto trucks or trains and shipped.
Many products today are so complicated that they require customer service and technical
support departments to help customers use them. Computers are a good example of this sort
of product. On-going products like cell phone service may also require on-going customer
service because customers want to change the service they receive over time. Traditional
items (for example, a head of lettuce), generally require less support that modern electronic
items. You find all of these elements in any traditional mail order company. Whether the
company is selling books, consumer products, information in the form of reports and papers,
or services, all of these elements come into play.
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2.1.3 Internet E-commerce overview
Internet Commerce Opportunity Phenomenal growth has occurred and is expected to continue

15
books to consumers all around the world), distance plays a role because it adds to the time
and cost of the delivery.
The Internet will bring radical change to automation in trading. By providing a ubiquitous
public network and standards for communication, the Internet will help businesses lower costs
in EDI-like transactions. More importantly, the Internet will make it easier for small and
medium-sized businesses to participate in automated commerce transactions. Many
businesses—small, medium, and large—will soon send and receive the majority of their
purchase orders and invoices over the Internet.
2.1.4 Benefits of Internet for E-commerce
• Ease of access and global search: there was a consensus that the World Wide Web
(WWW) is an ideal mechanism for providing relevant information to the public globally.
It allows organizations an opportunity for publicizing their products and services at
minimum cost. By putting information on routinely asked questions on the home pages,
organizations are saving costs by reducing the number of customer service
representatives. Also, customer can place order through the Internet once security issues
are worked out. The WWW holds the potential to increase the market share and helps
expand into new market by virtue of its global reach. Additionally, easy access to
information through the Internet gives the opportunities to compare the costs and
characteristics of products and services (R Nath et al).
• Low cost advertising medium: there is no doubt that Internet has become an
inexpensive advertising medium for organizations and is being effectively used by some
firms for commerce. The comments made by the president of a large IT international firm
allude to this issue as: the purpose of Internet offerings is to open their products and
services to a new customer base who prefers to use the Internet for their shipping needs
and to maintain a leading edge technology position and image in the market place and
against their competitions. (R Nath et al).
• Low barriers to entry: small and large firms alike have the opportunity to be on the
WWW and conduct business on the Internet. The barriers to entry to the Internet are
minuscule. The home pages give equal footing to small organizations with large national

of digital information or to create new transaction models or services without incurring
the traditional costs of complexity that exist in the physical world. Through Internet,
companies can create new value by taking away bits of some one else’s business. First, a
company can use its direct access to customers, each time customers visit a company’s
web site is an opportunity to deliver additional services or provide a path for other
businesses that want to reach that customers. The second one, a company can mine its
own digital assets to server new customer segments. Lastly, a company can take
17
advantage of its ability to conduct transactions over the Internet to take away value from
others (Shikhar Ghosh,1998)
• Controlling access to customer and setting new business rules : companies can
conceivably use the Internet to become the dominant player in the e- channel of specific
industry or segment. First, there are number of reasons that make the companies are not
invalid on the Internet as the physical distance between customer and suppliers, single
store can differentiate services, thus as the result, a small number of companies can meet
the diverse needs of large segments. Furthermore, if customers are not willing to learn
how to navigate hundreds of different sites, each with its own unique layout, then the web
site will turn out to be naturally concentrating medium. Therefore, in any cases, it is
conceivable that some companies will attempt to control the e- channel by becoming the
site that can provide everything that customers want, i.e. Companies can become magnets
by introducing new business models that take advantage of the interactive capabilities of
the Internet (Shikhar Ghosh,1998)
2.1.5 Trading environment
Business- to-business model:
Business-to-business electronic commerce, or B2B e-commerce, refers to that portion of
electronic commerce that takes place between businesses. Unlike B2C, or business-to-
consumer e-commerce, B2B e-commerce emphasizes supply chain integration, direct
marketing over the web, and electronic marketplaces. B2B e-commerce over the Internet can
be as basic as a manufacturer putting up a bare-bones Web site to let distributors securely
order a handful of products.

online Internet users was 55 million in July 1998, we applied our likelihood to buy data and
spending data to forecast total online retail sales in the USA. Estimates for the growth of
Internet usage in the United States average 2.5% per month (e.g., Broersma 1998; Court 1997;
Emmerce, 1998).
Electronic Commerce based Business's Activities and Functions
There are nine key activities in electronic commerce:
• Advertising and shopping,
• Negotiating,
• Ordering,
• Billing,
• Payment and settlement,
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• Distribution and receipt,
• Accounting,
• Customer service, and
• Information and knowledge processing.
The specific functions associated with these activities in an electronic commerce setting are
discussed below. Note that not all of these activities are performed in every transaction, nor
are they necessarily performed in this order; indeed, they may be performed in parallel. Also,
the activities are not necessarily all conducted electronically. Finally, these activities can vary
in complexity and importance depending on the size and scope of the transaction.
Advertising and Shopping
Advertising and shopping can include the following: A potential buyer browsing electronic
yellow pages and catalogs on a network. An agent shopping on behalf of one or many buyers
and/or sellers. A buyer sending an electronic request for proposal (RFP), and sellers
responding with various offers; Sellers advertising their products and services; and Buyers
electronically navigating and/or browsing through the World Wide Web's online services.
A major problem associated with the advertising and shopping activity is the cost and time
expended in developing, maintaining, and finding relevant information, products, and
services, given the plenitude of available information. Obviously, this problem will become