The beginnings of a crowdsourced tourism campaign for the Philippines?
Search #helpDOT on twitter and watch it unfold.
I first caught wind of this #helpDOT when I saw my friends Edgar and James, fellow CouchSurfers, tagging their tweets with it.
Help our Philippine Department of Tourism? As a travel enthusiast with nationalistic leanings, how could I resist? My involvement with YTRIP (Youth Tourism Response in the Philippines) has ingrained in me the belief that knowing myself as a Filipino is tied to knowing my Philippines. As they declare on their website: "Sa amin, ang pagkilala sa sarili ay kasabay sa pagkilala sa bayan, ang Pilipinas."
Plus, I’ve met my share of foreign visitors who have fallen in love with our country.
I know of and have seen a lot of the beauty in the Philippines. We have a pretty good product, that’s for sure. The question now is, how do we market it better?
So I went online and tried to hunt down the roots of this whole #helpDOT movement.
Carlos Celdran's July 28 entry on his "Walk this Way" blog recounts how it all began. DOT Undersecretary @entengromano took one of Celdran's tours, @carlosceldran tweeted some "thinking out loud" tweet, and @TeamManila saying "I want to help the DOT". Pretty soon, the #HelpDOT hashtag appeared, done by the team of @jillaquino. And Team Manila did come up with their creative response - fresh Philippine tourism posters, featured on their Flickr site.
And the rest is - well, it's history continuing to unfold this very second. To think, the whole thing just started a couple of days ago. Don't you just love technology? :D
The Department of Tourism is listening to your #helpDOT tweets. Here's your chance to give them a piece of your mind, tell them how you could help, or just share what you've already done.
So I ask two things from you -
1. Think about this: What do you want to say to them?
2. Tweet it, blog it, upload it, and most importantly, tag it with #helpDOT.
As my personal start, I went back to my Flickr travel photos and started tagging them properly, with "Philippines", "#helpDOT" and the correctly identified provinces and destinations.
And the rest is - well, it's history continuing to unfold this very second. To think, the whole thing just started a couple of days ago. Don't you just love technology? :D
The Department of Tourism is listening to your #helpDOT tweets. Here's your chance to give them a piece of your mind, tell them how you could help, or just share what you've already done.
So I ask two things from you -
1. Think about this: What do you want to say to them?
2. Tweet it, blog it, upload it, and most importantly, tag it with #helpDOT.
As my personal start, I went back to my Flickr travel photos and started tagging them properly, with "Philippines", "#helpDOT" and the correctly identified provinces and destinations.
It’s time the world finds out how beautiful the Philippines really is :D
Let's do our part to make it happen.
Let's do our part to make it happen.
