The Department of Tourism (DOT) and VISA announced a major strategic partnership aimed at significantly advancing the Philippines’ tourism sector through digitalization, enhanced promotion, and economic development.
The agreement, formalized on Thursday, November 27, will leverage VISA’s global digital solutions to improve the tourism experience for both local and international visitors, focusing on digital payments, capacity-building, and data-driven insights.
Under this new collaboration, the DOT and VISA will focus on the following key areas:
Seamless Digital Payments: Enabling local and international tourists to easily transact at key tourist destinations across the Philippines via VISA payments, enhancing convenience and security.
Support for SMEs: Bolstering the tourism economy by providing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with crucial digitalization and financial literacy programs.
Data-Driven Tourism Planning: Utilizing VISA’s digital tourism data and insights to further improve strategic planning and equal development across tourist destinations.
Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco hailed the government-private partnership as vital for advancing the tourism industry’s digitalization agenda, which is expected to support the national economy and provide livelihoods to the tourism sector.
“This partnership with VISA will also address and fulfill one of the commitments that was made by our President in approving the National Tourist Development Plan, and that is to prioritize digitalization and to ensure that in the programs that we introduced to our destinations, there is always equality in tourism development,” said Secretary Frasco.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed by Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco and Bella Lai, VISA’s Government Solutions, Regional Head of South East Asia, at the DOT Central Office in Makati.
Among the witnesses present were Undersecretaries Shahlimar Hofer Tamano and Ferdinand Jumapao, Assistant Secretaries Sharlene Zabala-Batin, Czarina Zara-Loyola, and Ronald Conopio, Director Alven Talisic, and VISA Director Trifina Sala.
