The City Government of Baguio has chosen Oracle Cloud to help manage interstate visitor traffic application process to support the city’s cautious re-opening of tourism activities and boost local economy. Using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to underpin Baguio Visitors Information & Travel Assistance (VISITA) online registration system and mobile application is enabling the City to register and trace visitors more accurately, thereby, ensuring the safety of almost 360,000 residents and interstate tourists. The deployment of Oracle Cloud has also delivered 55 per cent cost savings as compared to running the system on-premises.
Known as the “summer capital of the Philippines” due to its refreshing summer climate, pre-COVID Baguio City attracted more than a million visitors each year. At its peak, the website saw approximately 13 million hits within a week. Wanting to improve efficiency and be better able to record visitors’ details, track their movements and impose local health and safety protocols, the City decided to develop an integrated visitor management system. However, with movement restrictions in force, the City found implementing the system challenging and looked for an alternative cloud provider.
“As with many places around the world, seeing the City devoid of tourists was very hard. Wanting to welcome them back and protect our residents at the same time we turned to technology for the answer recognizing the efficiencies it could bring. We selected Oracle Cloud for the Baguio VISITA program due to its enterprise grade performance, rapid scalability and simplicity of integration which enabled the system to go live in just one week. Since moving to the cloud, we have seen significant cost savings as compared to previously,” said Alec Mapalo, Division Head, City Tourism and Special Events Office, City of Baguio.
To support the rapid implementation of the visitor system, Oracle Cloud Native Services including Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes, was used. This is an Oracle-managed container orchestration service that can reduce the time and cost to build modern cloud native applications.
To add to built-in security of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, the City added Oracle Cloud Guard, which detects misconfigured resources and insecure activity so they can be triaged and resolved. Additionally, Oracle Web Application Firewall, which combines threat intelligence with consistent rule enforcement, has been implemented to protect the application from malicious and unwanted internet traffic.
“The pandemic has accelerated the pace of digitization. In the Public Sector the government departments and organizations have had to pivot quickly to provide services remotely to the citizens while ensuring there services are secure, reliable and compliant with local regulations,” said Mina Lim, country managing director of Oracle Philippines.”With the adoption of a strong cloud foundation the City of Baguio has been able to adapt quickly to serve the tourists while ensuring their physical safety and deliver on its smart city goals.”
Funded and supported by the Department of Tourism and Tourism Promotions Board, the Baguio VIS.I.T.A. (Visitor Information and Travel Assistant) is the online registration system for Baguio tourists and travelers. It has become an instrumental tool for the city’s cautious re-start of tourism activities and gradual re-opening of the local economy.
The Baguio VIS.I.T.A. was designed as a general digital system that can regulate entry and monitor mobility of visitors through a ticketing system using a QR-coded Tourist Pass (QTP), and at the same time implementing the city’s health and safety protocols, from the mandated triaging up to digital check-ins for contact tracing.
More information is available at https://visita.baguio.gov.ph/.
