What a Philippine DMC Needs Before Work Can Start: Documents, Thresholds and the Liability Split

Start with your side: the six document sets a ground operator needs from you

On this page: Deadlines and knock-on effects ｜ Nine operator thresholds ｜ Where liability sits ｜ Force majeure allocation ｜ The twelve-line kickoff sheet

Whether the operator can begin depends on how complete these six sets are. Supply half and it plans on assumptions — and when an assumption proves wrong, you carry part of the replanning cost.

One: the final name list and identity details. Spelling must match the passport data page exactly. This is not a formality: segments requiring registered names — inter-island sailings, small-aircraft domestic sectors, some activities needing advance declaration — are ticketed against the list, and one wrong letter can mean cancelling and rebooking rather than a quick correction at the counter. Required fields: surname and given names as printed, document number, expiry, date of birth, nationality. Also flag which travellers form a family unit and who is the tour leader.

Two: rooming and who shares with whom. Not a total room count but an allocation sheet: room and bedding type, how single occupancy is handled, extra beds, children's ages (most properties tier child policy by age, so without ages the rooms cannot be held accurately), adjacency or same-floor needs, and accessibility or low-floor requirements.

Three: special meals and allergies. Write them at menu level, not as "dietary restrictions". Distinguish full vegetarian from lacto-ovo, halal, no seafood, nut allergy, lactose intolerance and religious requirements, and mark each as a preference or a medical restriction — the latter changes what the restaurant and the vessel need to prepare.

Four: older travellers, children and members with limited mobility. Describe capability rather than age: can they board and disembark a boat unaided, can they manage steps, is a wheelchair needed, is a lift-served room required, who accompanies them on the island-hopping day, and should their activity load be reduced. Without this, the day sequence the operator builds simply does not work for those travellers.

Five: insurance status. Who arranged it, policy number, policy period, scope, emergency contact and notification procedure. If anyone in the group is uninsured, say so explicitly and confirm in writing who carries the consequence.

Six: the tour leader and their authority. Name, phone, languages — and most importantly whether they can approve itinerary changes on the spot, up to what magnitude, and who to escalate to beyond it. With no decision-maker on the ground, every small change waits on a reply across time zones, and that is the single most common cause of a group running late.

How these are transmitted, how far the handover should go and what it costs to change a name after submission is covered in the full working cycle from enquiry to arrival. This article answers only which items, from whom, and by when.

Supply half the information and the operator plans on assumptions — and you pay part of the replanning when one proves wrong. Want blank templates for all six sets? Just ask →

The latest-by point for each item, and what a day's delay knocks over

Documents are not delivered in one package. They arrive in three layers — resource-holding, named ticketing and on-the-ground execution — and the earlier the layer, the less reversible a late delivery becomes.

Layer one: headcount range and dates. These come first because they determine whether rooms, seats and fleet availability can be held at all. Late here costs availability rather than money in peak weeks, and availability does not come back. You do not need exact numbers yet — a range plus a confirmation deadline is enough — but the range cannot be so wide that nothing can be held against it.

Layer two: gateways and flight numbers. These drive transfer scheduling and inter-island connections. While tickets are unissued, everything is marked provisional and fleet availability can only be soft-held, meaning it goes to whoever books firm first. The moment the status changes from provisional to ticketed, push that update rather than waiting to be asked.

Layer three: the final list and spelling. This maps to named ticketing. Once the list is submitted and tickets are issued, name changes and date changes follow their own rules, and some segments do not accept changes at all — the only route is to void and rebook. Proofreading spelling and document validity line by line before submission is cheaper than any remedy afterwards.

Layer four: rooming and sharing. Properties need the allocation sheet before their release deadline. The classic consequence of a late sheet is that the rooms still exist but not in the combination you wanted, sharing arrangements are scrambled, and the fix happens at the front desk on arrival day.

Layer five: special meals and health declarations. Restaurants and vessels need lead time to prepare. Raising it at the table on the day is the same as not raising it.

Layer six: change deadlines. The most overlooked item. Reducing headcount, adding travellers, moving dates, switching room type and switching vehicle class do not share one deadline. The correct move is to require the operator to list the latest-change point for each item in a table inside the confirmation sheet, rather than a blanket "changes accepted up to a few days before departure".

What a knock-on actually looks like: the list runs three days late, the inter-island segment cannot be ticketed in names, the group moves to the next day's sailing, the whole day sequence shifts by one, a confirmed hotel night goes unused and the final departure transfer no longer matches the flight. The original three-day delay cost nothing by itself; everything downstream did.

One precondition running the other way: the operator has to be able to confirm concurrent capacity on your dates in the first place — how many programmes it already carries that week and how much redundancy remains, as covered in the six things to verify before a trade partnership. Perfect paperwork cannot compensate for an operator that is already full.

A three-day delay on the name list costs nothing by itself — the whole displaced day sequence is where the money goes. Send dates and a headcount range and we will hold the scarce parts first →

The operator's side: nine thresholds you can actually sign off

The operator also has to clear a threshold to start, and all nine below are verifiable — the question is never whether it has something, but whether it can produce the document.

• One: vehicles matched to headcount and luggage. Enough seats does not mean enough space. Verify on a dual basis — bodies plus luggage pieces. Island-hopping days add wet gear and snorkel equipment; study and incentive groups add teaching materials, crates and banners. Put the luggage count into the brief and let the operator answer on vehicle class and load space.
• Two: crew rostering and hours. Hours on duty per day, overtime rules, continuous-driving and rest arrangements, whether the same person stays throughout, and how a driver overnighting away from base is handled. This determines the quality of the last day, not the first.
• Three: inter-island capacity held. Whether seats and domestic sectors come from an allocation or are bought after confirmation, evidenced by confirmations — carrier, service, class — not by the phrase "it is arranged".
• Four: accommodation confirmations. Booking reference, property name and precise location, guest names, refund deadline, minimum-stay requirements over peak dates, child and extra-bed policy.
• Five: documentation and insurance. The ability to issue a properly addressed corporate invoice, and a policy copy whose named insured is the contracting company, with the period covering every programme date.
• Six: on-site manager plus a backup contact. Two named people with their availability windows, not one mobile number.
• Seven: language capability. A licensed guide and a Mandarin-speaking escort are different roles. Establish who boards the boat on the island day, which segments are delivered in English, and whether the escort stays for the whole programme. The role distinctions are set out in how to find a Mandarin-speaking guide.
• Eight: contingency plans. Medical, suspended sailings, flight delays and a missing traveller — four scenarios, each with a chain someone can actually articulate: who attends first, who notifies whom, within what time, and what the alternative is.
• Nine: a complete confirmation sheet. Itinerary version number, headcount and rooming, pricing basis and validity, payment milestones with what each releases, and change and cancellation rules. Anything missing becomes a dispute later.

Turning these nine from claims into evidence is a verification exercise covered separately in six things that leave evidence behind. How the configurations show up on a quotation and how to align two of them is in the group quotation breakdown.

Enough seats is not enough space — nobody ever writes wet gear or an incentive group's crates into the brief. Send headcount and luggage pieces and we will answer on both →

Where the liability boundary sits: yours, theirs, and the grey strip in between

One principle settles most allocation questions: who held control over the thing that went wrong, and was the other side notified in writing as agreed. Control plus no notice equals liability; no control but notice and an alternative offered equals force majeure handling. Writing that principle into the contract is far more useful than trying to enumerate every scenario.

Usually the buyer's side. Misspelled names or wrong identity details that void a ticket; visas or entry permissions not secured, leaving a traveller unable to enter (how far an agency can take that step is covered in what an agency can and cannot do on visas); travellers leaving the group or altering the itinerary on their own, and incidents during free time; undisclosed health or mobility limitations that make the agreed day sequence unworkable; documents supplied after the agreed point, causing held resources to be released; no insurance or clearly insufficient cover; and no tour leader on the ground, or one with no authority to decide, which stalls every change.

Usually the operator's side. A vehicle that fails to arrive or arrives late, or is not the agreed class; a guide or escort who does not show, or a substitution made without prior notice; confirmed rooms not held, or an overbooking; confirmed admissions or seats not issued on time; crew configuration below what the confirmation sheet states; deviation from the confirmed itinerary without prior written communication; and an unreachable escalation chain inside the agreed response window.

One grey strip worth settling in advance: when something happens to a traveller during free time, does the operator have a duty to assist — usually yes, without being the liable party — and what does assistance include: contacting medical resources, providing interpretation, notifying your side and the family, helping with a report. Also agree who carries the additional dispatch cost that assistance generates. Writing "duty to assist, not the liable party" plainly stops the on-site finger-pointing.

A second grey strip is personnel substitution. Driver and guide changes cannot be eliminated entirely — illness, family matters and last-minute reassignment happen. What matters is not whether a substitution occurs but whether notice was given beforehand, whether the replacement is of equivalent standing, and whether you retain a right to refuse. Put those three into the clause and a substitution stops being a dispute.

Escalation, evidence preservation and the complaint route are covered in how to escalate and pursue a claim. Individual matters should go to a practising lawyer; this article is not legal advice.

Allocation turns on two facts: who held control, and whether written notice was given as agreed. Everything else is emotion. Want terms that spell out the boundary? We will draft to your programme type →

Typhoons, suspended sailings and flight disruption: how force-majeure costs are allocated

Force majeure is not a blanket excuse. It changes where liability sits; it does not remove the duty to notify or the duty to mitigate. Settle that point in advance and most typhoon-season disputes never happen.

First, define what qualifies. Sailings suspended because of a typhoon or sea conditions, where the decision rests with the authorities and the carrier on the day and neither contracting party can influence it; flight delays and cancellations; temporary closure of a site or activity; and public health or public safety events. What they share is that the decision sits outside both parties. By contrast, "the fleet could not be scheduled", "the guide was double-booked" and "someone else took the rooms first" are resource-management failures, not force majeure.

Three allocation principles — principles only; actual amounts follow what was incurred and each supplier's own rules.

• Consumed and non-refundable items sit where they fell. A vehicle already used that day, a room already occupied, a ticket already issued and non-refundable under its own rules — none of these reverse because the rest of the programme was cancelled. State this in advance, or someone will ask for the whole trip back on the day sailings stop.
• Refundable items are pursued by whoever holds the resource, who must initiate the request, follow it through and hand over the outcome and documentation. How much comes back follows the carrier's or property's existing rules; the operator should not promise beyond them, but must commit to the three actions of initiating, following up and evidencing.
• Any difference created by an alternative arrangement is allocated in advance. A common and workable formulation: a same-standard substitution has its dispatch cost absorbed by the operator; an upgrade is carried by the buyer after written confirmation; a downgrade is returned as actually incurred. Negotiating this after the event guarantees an argument.

Notification and mitigation run both ways. The operator must notify as soon as it knows and present at least one executable alternative at the same time; you must decide within a reasonable window. Additional loss caused by one side's delay belongs to that side — putting that sentence into the clause speeds up on-the-ground decisions considerably.

Rainy-season and typhoon-season programmes need two extra items agreed up front: a flexibility ranking for the day sequence (which day can move, which absolutely cannot), and a list of substitute sites for water-based activities — same area, not dependent on sea conditions, prepared beforehand rather than improvised on the day. Cancellation and amendment practice through the season is covered in typhoon-season cancellations and changes, and the recurring risk points of island days in where island-hopping programmes go wrong.

Force majeure excuses liability, not notification — loss caused by delay belongs to whoever delayed. Travelling in the rainy season? Let us build the substitute list first →

One last reconciliation: the twelve lines a kickoff confirmation sheet needs

A kickoff sheet is not a repeat of the confirmation sheet. It is the last pre-departure check that what was agreed on paper has actually landed. The confirmation sheet sets the obligations for this programme; the kickoff sheet verifies that every obligation is now in place. Twelve lines, ticked one by one.

• 1. Itinerary version number and sign-off date. Both sides must point at the same version; "the one from last time" is where disputes begin.
• 2. Headcount and list version. Adults, children and travellers needing special care listed separately, with the submission date and version of the list.
• 3. Rooming sheet version. Matching what was filed with the properties.
• 4. Flight numbers and timings. Including connections, marked ticketed or provisional.
• 5. Arrival meeting details. Meeter's name and phone, sign wording, meeting point down to terminal and exit number, and the waiting rule if the flight is delayed.
• 6. Crew list. Driver names and plate numbers, guide and escort names, languages, daily duty windows, and how a substitution is notified.
• 7. Accommodation confirmations. Property name, address, booking reference, guest names, refund deadline.
• 8. Inter-island confirmations. Carrier, service and timing, class, baggage basis and excess handling, amendment rules if sailings are suspended.
• 9. Special meal and health declaration status. Not "submitted" but "acknowledged by the restaurant and the vessel".
• 10. Three-tier escalation chain. On-site manager, office duty cover, escalation contact, each with availability window and language.
• 11. Payment milestone status and invoice addressee. Which payments have been made, what each one released, and confirmation that the invoice can be addressed as required.
• 12. Change deadline table. Reductions, additions, date moves, room-type and vehicle-class changes, each with its own latest-change date.

Three rules for using it. Keep a copy on each side, pointing at the same version number. Lines 9 and 11 are the ones most often ticked without verification — insist on a written acknowledgement for both. And store an offline copy of the whole sheet, because unstable networks, a dead phone and a group chat that has scrolled past all happening at once is not a rare combination.

Back to the opening question. The complete answer to what a Philippine ground operator needs is: six sets from you, nine thresholds from them, a written liability boundary and force-majeure allocation from both — then one reconciliation against these twelve lines. Do those three things and arrival day rarely surprises anyone.

Send the programme type, dates, headcount composition and destination combination and our team will assemble the six document templates and the twelve-line sheet against your actual programme. How to verify before signing that the nine thresholds are real is in six things that leave evidence, and how the engagement runs from enquiry to post-trip settlement is in the full working cycle and liability split. Incentive and study programmes, where timing synchronisation is tighter, carry extra requirements set out in what incentive programmes demand operationally.

The confirmation sheet sets the obligations; the kickoff sheet proves they landed — and lines 9 and 11 are the ones people tick without checking. Want the twelve-line sheet? Send the programme type →