HUAWEI has inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)
with the Department of Tourism (DOT) today to promote the Philippines’ tourist
destinations, arts and culture to its more than 600 million users around the world.
Attendees present at the signing ceremony were Department of Tourism Secretary
Bernadette Romulo-Puyat, DOT Assistant Secretary Howie Uyking, Huawei Philippines
Vice President Daniel Guo, and Huawei Hong Kong Service COO, Mr. Wang Zhihui.
The partnership aims to showcase the Philippines’ world-class tourist spots, Filipino
products and tourism-related events to HUAWEI Themes users in over 170 countries
and regions. Under the MoU, HUAWEI Themes users can explore the Philippines
curation series now under the “Pinoy Favorites” category on the app homepage.
The DOT will be the photo contributor under this partnership to provide source images
related to the Philippines’ arts and culture. Among others, the popular tourist
destinations in the Philippines such as beaches, islands, heritage towns, and deep seas
will be featured in the app. Moving forward, DOT will also offer domestic tourism
vouchers for hotels, attractions and tours to HUAWEI Themes users.
In her speech, DOT Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat expressed her gratitude to
Huawei for supporting the DOT’s efforts in handling the pandemic’s effect on the tourism
industry by lending its wide reach of smartphone users.
“Our strategy for the safe and gradual reopening of tourism in the Philippines will be
greatly supported by this digital content partnership as it will offer Huawei users
anywhere in the world with glimpses of our country’s beautiful destinations and allow
them to customize their mobile devices with images of our tourism offerings,” Romulo-
Puyat said. The Tourism Secretary hopes that through this project, Huawei smartphone
users will be inspired to visit the Philippines once the government resumes international
travel.
Meanwhile, Huawei Philippines Vice President Daniel Guo emphasized that Huawei’s
collaboration with the DOT is in line with the “glocalization” approach of Huawei
Philippines and Huawei Mobile Services (HMS). “Huawei has established an extensive cooperation with the government, local businesses and communities, to continuously
bring innovative digital services to consumers and create greater social values,” he said.
“Through the collaboration, we will curate a series of Philippines-centric wallpapers and
smartphone themes, including the scenery landscapes and tourist attractions of the
Philippines, as well as creative themes created by local artists, photographers,
cartoonists and animators,” Daniel Guo added.
The MoU will not only help promote beautiful places in the Philippines but will also open
a door of opportunity for talented Filipinos. Mobile themes created by passionate marine
environment artist AG Saño and digital artists Mariel Garcia, Nelvin Supilanas, Rehts
Merejilla and Mark Magnaye are now available in HUAWEI Themes.
HUAWEI Themes is one of the first self-developed apps by HMS, In 2020, it achieved
over 1.8 billion total themes download. By end of 2020, 96% of the PH local top apps,
including Gcash, Paymaya, BDO Digital Banking, UnionBank Online, and SSS Mobile,
have integrated with HMS Core and onboarded to AppGallery.
Through the open HMS Ecosystem, Huawei shares a number of innovative capabilities
with its partners from various sectors, including tourism, which enable high-quality,
convenient and safe applications to reach every Huawei device user in a more direct
way. Through this, Huawei is able to lower the connectivity cost and expand service
coverage, bringing modern digital services to a wider user base. By providing localized
service applications in more countries and regions, Huawei makes All-Scenario services
more accessible to users, jointly improving service efficiency and digitization level of
services.
