THE Davao Travel Agency Association (DTAA) has called on the city government to allow travel agents to operate from their homes.
In a presentation to the Tourism Congress of the Philippines (TCP), DTAA president Day Uyking said she is anticipating that her members will consider operating from a home office as domestic and international travel gradually resumes.
Uyking said with the change of ticketing operations of their members, from doing it in their offices to their homes, might pose a challenge.
“But with home offices, the question is if the DOT (Department of Tourism) will allow us to operate from home because for now, accreditation is only given to those with physical offices,” she said.
She said their services, while personalized most of the time, have been communicating with their customers digitally.
“The good thing about this business is we don't have to have a face-to-face interaction with the clients in the booking process,” she said.
She said the home office setup of the travel agency while transacting online might be questioned by the clients for its legitimacy.
“This also concerns the CTOO (City Tourism Operations Office) in checking and being more stringent with the operations of each agent whether tour operators or agents themselves [to ensure] that everybody operating is actually accredited with CTOO and DOT,” she said.
Recently, three airlines have decided to resume operations with limited or selected schedules starting June following the order of the Department of Transportation Arthur Tugade to allow domestic air operation as Metro Manila will be under modified general community quarantine (MGCQ).
With this, the Davao City Tourism Operations Office (CTOO) warned the public not to purchase airline tickets from unlicensed ticketing offices and travel agents.
Based on its advisory, Philippine Airlines (PAL) will launch daily flights from Manila to Davao and Cebu to Davao effective June 8.
Air Asia, meanwhile, will start its flight operations on June 3 and will make available the flights between Davao to Manila and Davao to Clark.
Cebu Pacific did not yet open flights to Davao City based on their advisory as of May 30, 2020, 8:00 p.m.
However, the Civil Aviation Board (CAB) advised airlines to cancel their flights and the selling of tickets for June 1.
“Please be informed that the IATF (Interagency Task Force) has yet to approve the routes for domestic air services proposed by airlines for the resumption of the domestic operations in the first week of June, 2020,” CAB executive director Carmelo Arcilla said in an advisory dated May 30.