Public Diplomacy

Last August 28, 2010, we attended the SEM-CDA seminar on Public Diplomacy. Supposedly there were three speakers but only one came. He is from the Department of Tourism and I was not able to hear his name. Throughout his speech, he kept on saying that experience is the best teacher and he strengthened that by stating his experiences abroad and understanding the culture of other countries. He pointed out to us the activities of DOT, first is the familiarization trip which they invite people to visit the Philippines. Since DOT operates small budget, one of the smallest budget in the administration, they also rely on the word of mouth promotion which is an inexpensive promotion. Next is promoting websites which people can book thru the internet. Last is rebranding tourism products and the Philippines like the WOW Philippines and develop more digital campaigns, disseminating information thru the net. Then we had an open forum which there were questions that are about the hostage crisis last August 23, 2010. There was a question what did the DOT do to make up for the hostage crisis, the speaker told us that there were an industry forum for that incidence and they talked that they wanted to be aggressive but not too aggressive to show their sympathy and to show that we are sorry and the issue will die eventually and they have plans but it will take some time before they implement it. He gave us an idea on what the Department of Tourism is all about and the thing he said is YOU ARE THE NUMBER ONE AMBASSADORS OF YOUR COUNTRY.