The days of wild guessing around the tourist destinations of the Philippines are over. Tourists can now have an idea of creating their vacation itineraries through the services of a tourist assistance call center, the Philippines first-ever.
“We are delighted to launch, today, the Tourist Assistance Call Center that aims to fulfill our President’s (Marcos) vision to enhance the overall tourist experience in the country,” DOT Secretary Cristina Frasco said in her speech.
According to the tourism chief, the Tourist Assistance Call Center shall serve as the hotline and one-stop shop for local and foreign tourists, made available to provide tourism and travel-related information and extend any assistance if any to untoward incidents that may occur during the tourist visit.
The tourist assistance call center agents are ready to receive inquiries beginning today, from local and foreign tourists traveling to and around the country.
The public can relay their queries through multi-platform support via hotline number 151-TOUR / 151-8687 or mobile by dialing +63995-835-5155. They may also opt to contact via email at touristassistance@tourism.gov.ph; web chat at https://philippines.travel/ and https://beta.tourism.gov.ph/; or through Facebook messenger at https://www.facebook.com/DepartmentOfTourism;
For those outside the Philippines who have interest to visit the country, they can access the tourist assistance center thru click-to-call feature on DOT’s website, as long as they have internet access.
A total of 8 Call Center agents, who can tackle around 200 touch points a day, are available to answer queries in Tagalog and English, 24/7. They are outsourced agents of service provider, Universal Access and Systems Solutions (UAS), an IT Solutions company based in Pasig. UAS has been in the business since 2005. The call center business was put up in 2020 and now occupying two buildings in Clark, Pampanga.
UAS Service Provider Manager Chris Berenguer said, “Since this is the first project of DOT, we can’t tell yet how much the capacity of calls we are going to receive from incoming, emails or chats. As we go along, weekly or monthly, we will still have to report to DOT to see through expansion.
Sec. Frasco noted that the DOT will not limit the number of agents who will be working for the call center and will add foreign language agents in the future.
As related by UAS’ Mau Nivales, the agents were trained more than 3 months with extensive knowledge of tourism and travel including the DOT’s Filipino Brand of Service Excellence. All throughout the training, they were taught combination of theoretical and practical knowledge, and they also did lot of role plays. They are expected to excel in their job as they are tenured call center agents.
Taking all kinds of queries can range from relevant to inane, serious to mundane, and so all transactions are recorded in a customer relationship management (CRM). Unresolved queries will be endorsed to the relevant DOT regional office or attached government agency via email.
“Tourism is one of the strongest pillars of our economy. And therefore, the effort of the Department of Tourism is to ensure that we continue to provide innovative services to the industry that correspond to the demands of our customers and clients. We foresee that by providing this tourist assistance call center, this will increase the tourism experience. This will also assist in providing further livelihood and employment opportunities for those in the tourism value chain,” Secretary Frasco emphasized.