New digital tools to help in tourism recovery

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Tourism has signed a memorandum of understanding with Talino Ventures Lab for the free use of digital mitigation and management solution tools of DOT-accredited establishment.

Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat said the MOU signed with Talino Ventures Lab would have the recently developed SafePass Express and Dine In Express apps offered to DOT-accredited establishments and restaurants for free.

“The MOU also opens the door for collaboration with the DOT for the development and improvement of technological solutions for tourism-related establishments,” Puyat said.

“As we forge forward in these challenging times, securing the health and safety of our public and also our tourism stakeholders will be paramount in our tourism industry’s recovery,” Puyat said.

SafePass is  a digital COVID-19 incident mitigation and management solution developed to make safety protocols easy and stress-free. It is an easy and convenient tool to easily limit and track foot traffic, and produce digital contact-tracing reports in case of a COVID incident.

Talino Venture Labs CEO Winston Damarillo said SafePass now offers two types of free plans namely SafePass Base, which is free for all types of organizations for basic contact-tracing and digital health questionnaires, and SafePass Express, which comes with employee management features, and is free for government agencies and for establishments accredited by the DOT.

“Our battle cry is ‘SafePass Para Sa Lahat,’ so we made sure that SafePass can be used by as many individuals and organizations as possible, anywhere in the Philippines,”Damarillo said.

“Organizations already have a lot on their plate as they continue to weather the effects of the pandemic, so we aim to help them with health and safety protocols so that they can focus on their operations,” he said.

SafePass Base digitalizes processes such as keeping track of foot traffic data hour-by-hour and day-by-day, as well as storing and organizing health forms and contact details. It is offered for free and is best for micro-enterprises with single locations, market stalls, and even non-profits, small churches, and households.

Meanwhile, SafePass Express offers an additional capacity planning tool to set how many individuals can be in a location at any given time, as well as an employee management system.

Talino Ventures Lab is also offering another express app called Dine In for free to accredited restaurants, which will allow customers to schedule a reservation in a restaurant, following the government’s safe distancing and incident management regulations, book, order and pay their dine-in orders ahead through an all-digital, contact-free menu.

Puyat said SafePass would be a significant partner for tourism stakeholders as it would provide them with an all in one contact tracing, heath declaration and incident management platform, which is offered through a contactless channel.

“By providing our stakeholders with practical, pragmatic and effective solutions such as SafePass, we can convince more people to adapt and make the shift to a contactless low-touch economy,” Puyat said.

The DOT, through its Office of Industry and Manpower Development (OIMD) in partnership with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, recently conducted an online learning course on digital payments for tourism stakeholders as contactless transaction is among the measures that ensures social distancing under the new normal.

“The DOT recently released health and safety guidelines for the operations of tourism enterprises and encouraged contactless transactions as a precautionary measure to ensure social distancing and the safety of both guests and employees,” the DOT-OIMD said.

“Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has started regulating Electronic Money Issuers or EMIs which can be tapped by the DOT accredited enterprises for their contactless transactions,” it added.

Puyat earlier urged tourism stakeholders to shift their businesses into the digital arena in line with being able to keep up with the demands of the new normal.

“The recommended protocols of the ‘new normal’ encourage contactless transactions, hence, the shift to e-commerce is absolutely necessary for business continuance in the post-COVID world,” Puyat said.