News and Updates
DOT WEBINAR TACKLES DIGITAL AS THE NEW NORMAL
We must make the transition to digital and online for our industry to survive.
Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat made the statement on the recent webinar titled, “Digital as the New Normal” organized by the Department of Tourism (DOT) recently.
“As we move into the next phase of community quarantine, we also want you to bring new skills to the table. As many of us who are stuck at home during the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ), we have to find our ways to get our food, groceries, and other necessities to be delivered to us. E–commerce, digital marketing, payment, and delivery apps flourish as we have no choice but to rely on online shopping,” Puyat said in her welcoming remarks.
Puyat also expressed her enthusiasm on how the digital landscape has been made more accessible to all, including purchasing of vegetables from the Benguet farmers.
“We have Philippine Harvest online, so we link our farmers to all the people here in the National Capital Region (NCR). We are now working with Grab para hindi lang yung sa online ang payment, pati yung delivery,” the DOT Chief added.
On April 22, the DOT launched the online leg of the Philippine Harvest trade fair in partnership with retail group Stores Specialists Inc. (SSI) in an effort to continue promoting and giving access to fresh produce and local food products from Micro, Small and Medium-Scale Enterprises (MSME) and farmers amid the pandemic. Interested Filipino consumers may support this endeavor through the official Facebook page at facebook.com/PhilippineHarvest.
Puyat encouraged the Department to continue the use of technology on Online Learning Series (OLS) especially to adapt to the “less or no contact” trend in doing business.
“We are in tourism so we also have to look for new ways and think out of the box. Later on, the DOT shall be assisting more tourism enterprises across the country in digitizing your operations, communication, and selling, especially for small and medium businesses. If there is one thing this pandemic has taught us, it’s that for our industry to survive, we must make the transition to digital and online to make sure that small businesses don’t get left behind. Ang kagandahan nito, we are in touch with so many people right now in the tourism industry,”
Resource speaker Mark Joseph (MJ) Panganiban, a Director and Head of e-Commerce to one of the biggest telecommunication company in the Philippines and concurrently, Executive Director of the Digital Commerce Association of the Philippines, provided an insightful discussion on value proposition, the power of photos and digital marketing, creating effective content, establishing online presence, target marketing, and the how’s of online payment among other relevant topics to help the tourism stakeholders start digital marketing or upgrade their current social media accounts.
“This is what digital marketing looks like in a nutshell: define a target audience, attract target audience with free content or ads, make sales, and measure and optimize. Always keep in mind that you are doing this for the benefit of the business,” Panganiban said.
In the end, Puyat invited the participants to travel from home and use travel photos as a background on video meetings.
“It’s also a way of promoting your place, so you’re proud of where you came from.”
The DOT encourages the public to “Travel From Home” in April by providing free downloadable background photos for video conferencing platforms like Zoom to showcase the ‘fun’ in the Philippines until travel is allowed again. The photos can be downloaded from www.philippines.travel/fromhome.
All webinars are recorded and may be accessed through the DOT Facebook page (https://tinyurl.com/y8vvqktf).
Published:March 9, 2021
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