THE Tourism Promotions Board (TPB), the marketing arm of the Department of Tourism (DOT), will be making available nationwide a fully integrated digital app for booking flights, hotels and tours.
On Tuesday, I spoke with the super-energetic TPB Chief Operating Officer Ma. Anthonette C. Velasco-Allones who explained the reason for developing this app. “We want to ensure a seamless contactless and efficient end-to-end travel experience for our tourists,” considering we all now have to contend with travel requirements as well as strict health and safety guidelines to contain the spread of Covid-19. And one of those guidelines, as per the DOT, is to go digital and contactless as much as possible.
She added, the app’s opening page “also seeks to provide the traveler with all the updated, consolidated information about the open destinations such as pre-travel requirements, etc.” Like for instance, if we want to go to Boracay, the country’s crown jewel of tourism, all we need to do is hit the app and find out what we have to do before traveling there, e.g., filling up of health declaration forms, taking an RT-PCR test 48 hours before our flight, the list of DOT-accredited hotels, among others.
Allones also mentioned the travel app in Tuesday’s online launch of Philippine AirAsia’s Manila-Zamboanga flights: “We are so proud that we have supported Baguio City in the Visitor Information and Travel Assistance [Visita] app, and we are doing that across the country.” Visita is also a digital monitor system to keep track of visitor activities, which the TPB funded.
But for TPB’s own travel app, Allones said: “[Tourists] can log on to that, and it’s a progressive web app…even without an [Internet] connection you can use it. We envision it to provide the end-to-end experience. So we welcome AirAsia to be a partner because it starts with booking the trip, including also booking the hotels, and we have talked to various associations like the HSMA [Hotel Sales and Marketing Association].”
She said the app will also enable tourists to book their land transport and even tours.
The TPB is poised to “launch the travel app [this month] and it is capable of integrating the different systems being used by LGUs [local government units],” such as the Visita in Baguio City and the Ultimate Bohol Experience (UBE) app in Bohol.
Allones said TPB’s still-unnamed travel app will be able to generate a QR code for each tourist, so it has the ability to trace the places he visited and his contacts during his stay, in case he takes ill from Covid.
She added the travel app is web-based, “so even non-Android phone users can access it.”
A number of tourism stakeholders and LGUs have taken to the digitizing many of their procedures to ensure the safety of their guests and visitors.
As I mentioned earlier, Baguio City’s Visita app, for instance, contains a visitor web dashboard for account registration, travel registration, payments, QR coupon reading, and dispensing travel advisories and tourism information; a site portal for the profile registration of tourism establishments, services, and sites. It also hosts the check-in/out mechanism and a centralized contact-tracing database; an admin interface for the real-time monitoring of visitor profiles and sites visited; setting registration requirements and visitor criteria. It also contains data analytics and advisories; as well as a mobile app version that receives real-time notifications, and can be used as a travel guide and for assistance.
Bohol’s UBE is actually an accreditation system to ensure the province’s tourism establishments are strictly following health and safety guidelines and other requirements based on DOT’s accreditation system. It also ensures a system for contact-tracing, as well as contactless booking and transactions. The LGU has likewise distributed about 300,000 contact-tracing cards, which carries a QR code unique to each individual, thus enabling the government to monitor the movement and location of cardholders.
Earlier, the DOT also launched SafePass, which essentially helps, for example, a restaurant plan the available space for dine-in guests and as such, determine how many people will be allowed inside, and also features a contact-tracing aspect.
Customers, on the other hand, can safely book using SafePass, fill out the health declaration form online, and find out what time they can eat at the restaurant following physical-distancing protocols. Created by Talino Ventures, the DOT has made available the app’s express version to its accredited establishments.
Even AirAsia has digitized before the pandemic. Over a year ago, it deployed its chatbot to answer customer inquiries and questions. The airline said then that the decision was reached after reviewing the ways in which their customers have been relying more on online, social media and mobile apps for information. The AI-powered Ava (AirAsia Virtual Allstar) speaks 11 languages, and enables customers to fully access the airlines products and services.
AirAsia will be mounting its passenger flights between Manila and Zamboanga City for the first time starting October 27, with twice weekly roundtrip flights on Tuesday and Saturday.
Prior to this, AirAsia only had cargo flights and mounted repatriation flights for those stranded during the Covid-19 lockdown.
The airline will also inaugurate its commercial passenger flights to General Santos on October 28, with twice weekly roundtrip flights, as well every Wednesday and Friday.
Digital is power, and data is the most precious currency these days, pandemic or otherwise.