PH activates eTravel system to ease inbound travel processes

The Philippine national government launched on Friday, December 2, the eTravel portal that aims to streamline entry procedures and data collection processes for inbound passengers.

The eTravel portal replaces the former One Health Pass domain with travelers visiting www.onehealthpass.com.ph redirected to https://etravel.gov.ph/.

The government said that the new website contains the "health declaration checklist" issued by the Department of Healthcare-Bureau of Quarantine (DOH-BoQ).

The eTravel platform will also host the electronic-based arrival card that every traveler must submit to the Philippine authority upon arrival for immigration clearance.

This was after the Bureau of Immigration (BI) said that it will discontinue using paper-based arrival cards starting December 5 as users must now provide their arrival information through the new digital platform.

Department of Information in Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Ivan John Uy said on Tuesday that the development of the eTravel system was part of President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.'s directive to push for better e-governance.

"That's the directive that President [Ferdinand R. Marcos] gave to us, the DICT – to help the different government agencies push through with e-governance," Uy told.

DICT worked alongside BI, DOH-BoQ, the Bureau of Customs (BOC), the Department of TOURISM (DOT), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of Transportation (DOTr) to develop the eTravel portal.

On the other hand, the government explained that eTravel registration is free and warned the public to avoid transacting with online services asking for payments and fees to process their registry.

"Registration on the eTravel platform is free. The public is warned against transacting with any entities or websites soliciting payments and fees of any kind as these are in no way related to the official eTravel platform of the Philippine Government," the government said.