Samal Pilots Infotext Program

Davao City and its neighboring cities Island Garden City of Samal and Tagum City both from the Davao del Norte Province launched yesterday the first in the country’s Infotext Board. This is a text marketing program of the Department of Tourism in partnership with SMART and the local government units of Davao, Samal, and Tagum.

The program enables local and even foreign tourists to immediately find answers to their questions regarding travel and tourism by the use of their mobile phone through SMS or text messaging.

“We have chosen to pilot this project in the Davao region because it is here that we’ve seen how the public, the government agencies are so enthusiastic to use this messaging tool to promote tourism,”

said Bong Mojica, SMART’s Wireless Consumer Division Head. Tourists need not spend much time going to the right office or asking a number of people just to answer their queries about travel. This facility is designed to ease communication time.

Mojica explained providing a more interactive portal would definitely increase the number of tourists in local areas. ”

Here, we should consider that the web and text messaging has proven to be a thing of the Filipinos. So we must take advantage of this to get them together for a certain cause,” he said.

The sectors benefiting in this project would be the local tourism industry and also the local government.Both LGUs and the DOT are tasked to generate and prepare updated information about travel and tourism. This way, the transfer of information is efficient, secured, and reliable. DOT then urged local tourist establishments like hotels, restaurants, tour operators to secure accreditation from the office for them to register in the InfoText Board. This serves as their ticket to be included in the advertisements and advisories given out by the DOT to its clients.

To get a list of accommodation, one will just have to text DVOCITY INFO HOTEL to 700-DAVAO or 700-32826. Other information includes resort, inns, apartelle, tour operators, tour guides, restaurants, spa, sights, and transportation.

Davao eyed as pilot area for Infotext Board – Philippine Information Agency.

Photo credit: flickr | Kurt Christensen