Messaging platform Rakuten Viber has entered into a partnership with the Philippine Department of Tourism (DoT) to make accredited local tour operators accessible to travelers through business accounts on its application.

Rakuten Viber Senior Director for Asia-Pacific David Tse said the initiative will allow travelers to search for DoT-accredited tourism operators and inquire directly about their services within the messaging platform.

“We want to support local tourism business through Viber Business account and make [these businesses] discoverable within the app,” Mr. Tse said during a media briefing on Tuesday.

The partnership is timed ahead of the fourth-quarter holiday travel period, when the company expects increased activity among travelers. Mr. Tse said the initiative is intended to make smaller tourism operators easier to find through the app, noting that the fragmented nature of local tour businesses makes it difficult for consumers to identify service providers. That fragmentation is also what gives the accreditation filter its utility: because results are limited to DoT-accredited operators, the in-app search acts as a first-pass check for consumers weighing unfamiliar providers.

The DoT collaboration adds to Viber’s existing partnerships with government agencies and telecommunications companies. These include arrangements with the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), Globe Telecom, Inc., Smart Communications, Inc., and DITO Telecommunity Corp. involving measures against spam and online fraud. Taken together, the arrangements give the platform an institutional footprint in the country spanning consumer-protection measures as well as tourism promotion.

Philippine Market

The announcement comes alongside fresh usage data for the Philippines, one of Rakuten Viber’s strongest markets. The company said it expects monthly active users in the country to rise 16.5% year on year, although it did not disclose the projected number of users or the period covered by the forecast.

Daily time spent on the application increased 24% year on year, placing the Philippines first among its markets globally in terms of time spent per user, according to the company.

The number of paying Viber Plus subscribers in the country rose 34% year on year, while year-to-date revenue from the subscription service increased 75%. Rakuten Viber said the Philippines was its largest market globally in terms of Viber Plus revenue contribution.

Monthly active users of Viber Dating grew 96% year on year, with the Philippines accounting for 56% of new dating profiles created globally in the year to date, the company said. Active business accounts increased 20.5% year on year, while business interactions rose 127%, making the Philippines its second-fastest-growing market for business interactions.

“There are two dimensions to this growth. More people are using Viber, and second, these users are finding more reasons to use [the app]. Viber is connecting people with people, people with new relationships, and increasingly people with businesses,” Mr. Tse said.

The tourism partnership slots into the fastest-moving part of those figures: business interactions, with 127% year-on-year growth, far outpacing the 20.5% rise in active business accounts.

AI and Payment Services

Separately, Rakuten Viber Chief Revenue Officer Cristina Constandache said data processed by the platform’s artificial intelligence (AI) features, developed through its integration with OpenAI, is not used to train AI models.

“None of the data that is used to actually activate these features is used to train AI models in the background,” Ms. Constandache said.

She also said the company’s Viber Pay service is awaiting final regulatory clearance from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas ahead of its planned launch in the Philippines.

“From a product perspective, on a commercial side, the product is ready and we have obtained the licenses that would allow us now to launch the product. But in the meantime, the regulatory authorities still need to give a final go-ahead,” she said.

For readers tracking the company’s Philippine push, the near-term markers are concrete: the DoT tie-up timed to the fourth-quarter travel period, and Viber Pay’s pending final clearance from the Bangko Sentral.

With a report from Juliana Chloe A. Gonzales, BusinessWorld.

Source: BusinessWorld