Providing excellent service in 'silence'

MANILA, Philippines - In the famed tourist destination of Bohol province is a resort-hotel, Dao Diamond, where deaf people are trained and employed as hotel staff and gladly assist visitors in their every need using the sign language. The only one of its kind in Tagbilaran City, this hotel provides excellent service, literally, in silence.

Only the reception area has normal hearing people to attend to visitors checking in and out of the hotel and taking their every order for meals or shuttling them around the province. The kitchen staff takes their cue on what to cook from orders written down by either the guests or the hearing staff.

Dao was originally not intended to be a hotel. As planned, it was supposed to be a dormitory or housing for deaf students of the School for the Deaf of the IDEA (the acronym for International Deaf Education Association) USA and IDEA Philippines, founded by Dennis Drake, a former Peace Corps volunteer who made it his mission to make a difference by attending to the needs of indigent hearing-impaired people from Bohol, Leyte and Samar.

IDEA Philippines works closely with the provincial government in establishing deaf centers in existing regular schools (now in five elementary schools and one high school), with currently 360 deaf students, including those from Ormoc, already benefiting from this arrangement.

This is in addition to the Bohol Deaf Academy, a sprawling 20-hectare property that houses the dormitories and the William J. Shaw livelihood center — with half of the area producing artificial fishing baits, a growing product among coastal fishermen and the other half for the vocational training of the deaf.

Opened in 2002, the hotel was transformed from just a dormitory donated by Consuelo Zobel-Algier, the aunt of Augusto Zobel, into an employment and income generating project (EIGP) to ensure the sustainability of various programs for the welfare of growing deaf population in the Visayas, Drake told The STAR.

The hotel has 23 private rooms (comprising of de luxe, family and standard rooms) and eight dorms (with five double deck beds), a swimming pool that was recently acquired from the owner of the adjoining property and a comfortable and simply-landscaped frontage that invites visitors to try it out.

The hotel employs 20 deaf people (including construction workers, whose skills are hardly enough to get them employed as hotel staff) and seven normal hearing people (mostly at the front desk).

Quite far from the town proper, as it is nearer the Tagbilaran Airport, the hotel attracts mostly student guests from neighboring Visayan provinces (those using the RORO), local governments and private companies for their conference needs and some foreign and local tourists wanting to tour the province.

Meals served are a fusion of Filipino, American, Chinese, Caribbean, Mexican and other cuisines. The deaf cooking staff are so versatile and could easily adapt to what is required by the guests, Drake added.

IDEA Foundation also owns and runs the IDEA Pension House in Jagna, Bohol.

At best, Dao Diamond, the IDEA Pension House in Jagna and the Garden Café provide more reasons — including getting an emotional high from helping the deaf by patronizing these establishments — for one to visit Bohol.