THE Department of Tourism (DOT) has warned that it will cancel the certificate of authority to operate of hotels, which continuously flout the health and safety protocols set by the government to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat issued the warning in the wake of several incidents reported to their agency of hotels not accommodating their returning overseas Filipino (ROF) guests on time, and letting them mingle with the general population. In one incident, she told the BusinessMirror, a five-star hotel in Pasay “overbooked” its rooms, and let its waiting guests “loiter in its lobby without following any physical distancing protocols,” and had no masks on.
She said the guests arrived at 3 a.m. but were told the check-in time was still at 3 p.m. The duty manager insisted that the guests should have booked their stay a day before the arrival, but the guests averred, they were not informed that they were supposed to do this. Some guests also left the hotel to eat.
Similarly, a three-star hotel in Malate also didn’t have the rooms ready for their ROF guests and thus, allowed the latter to just go out and eat. “So if one of those guests were positive, they could have already mingled with the general population and spread the virus!” said the DOT chief.
“We advise the hotels to prepare the rooms of their arriving guests, at the expected time of arrival, so they can immediately proceed to their rooms for quarantine,” stressed Romulo Puyat. She noted, “These are extraordinary times, and we are living in a pandemic,” so the hotels should have flexible check-in procedures to immediately accommodate their guests upon arrival. Normally, hotels have a 3 p.m. check-in time.
She said the agency has already written the two hotels and asked them to explain the circumstances surrounding the reported incidents of health and safety violations. “After a first warning, if they do it again, we will cancel their certificates of authority to operate,” she warned, “and we will be constrained to review their accreditation.”
Romulo Puyat underscored, “We have to contain the virus,” adding these hotels have been allowed to operate to accept guests who need to temporarily quarantine themselves while waiting for their Covid-19 test results. “So they should not be allowed to mingle with the rest of the population; we had already issued regulations regarding this matter.”
The DOT also wrote the heads of the Tourism Congress of the Philippines, Philippine Hotel Owners Association, and Hotel Sales and Marketing Association Inc., urging them to remind their members to strictly adhere to the health and safety protocols issued by the government. The guidelines include DOT Administrative Order 2020-002-A or Amended Guidelines on the Operation of Hotels and Other Establishments Under a Community Quarantine (Annex A), DOT Memorandum Circular 2020-002-A, or the Amended Health and Safety Guidelines Governing the Operations of Accommodation Establishments under the New Normal (Annex B), the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging and Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) Omnibus Guidelines on the Implementation of Community Quarantine in the Philippines.
“While we understand the business and operational challenges faced by our private sector partners in these trying times, the health and safety of our fellow Filipinos—guests and employees alike—should remain our primary consideration,” said Romulo Puyat in her letters to these organizations dated August 3, 2020.