At least six tour companies in the southern metro have begun the service in recent months.

They provide information through websites, touch screens, maps, catalogues, magazines, and brochures at booths they have set up in popular tourist destinations like districts 1, 3, 5 and 10.

Information about hotels, places to visit, routes, transportation, bus routes, shopping sites, entertainment services, flight schedules, weekly events in Viet Nam – there is virtually no information they do not provide.

According to Vuong Quang, director of Chao Viet Nam Info Centre just outside the Reunification Palace, 150-200 visitors come asking for tourism information daily, 60 per cent of them Europeans.

The centre is in touch with 130 tourism companies and has their brochures and catalogues.

It provides free information about weekly events and flights and maps of HCM City in five languages.

Vina Media Company and Dat Viet Advertising Company have touch screens that provide information to tourists.

Le Hoang Yen, director of Vina Media, said the company plans to install a further 100 booths at three – and five-star hotels, commercial centres, and office buildings.

The cost of hardware alone was US$5,000 per booth, she added.

Dat Viet Advertising Company has installed 13 booths at a total cost of $10,000 in Districts 3 and 5. It plans to install another 50 in HCM City and 40 in Ha Noi by year-end.

According to Da Nang’s Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, two tourist information booths have been set up in the city.

Yen said her company constantly updated information about services and new and interesting destinations.

More than 1.5 million foreign tourists visited HCM City in the first half of this year, an increase of 16 per cent year-on-year.

Earnings from tourism were worth VND14.6 trillion ($869 million), an increase of 40 per cent.