SwiftStaff: A Proposed Architectural Design of a Mobile-Based Manpower Pooling and On-Call Staffing Platform for Hotels in Western Pangasinan

The hospitality industry in Western Pangasinan faces persistent workforce challenges caused by fluctuating tourist demand across destinations such as Hundred Islands, Patar Beach, the caves of Anda, and the surfing coves of Dasol and Burgos. Hotels rely heavily on informal recruitment channels, including social media, personal contacts, and word-of-mouth, which frequently lead to no-shows, skill mismatches, and inefficient part-time deployment. This study aims to design the architecture of SwiftStaff, a mobile-based manpower pooling and on-call staffing platform that connects local hotels with Hospitality Management students of Pangasinan State University – Alaminos City Campus. A combined descriptive and developmental research design was used. Observations, surveys, and structured interviews characterized the existing on-call hiring process, while development followed an adapted seven-phase Agile Software Development Life Cycle using Android Studio, PHP, MySQL, Firebase, and Figma. Purposive sampling identified 100 target respondents for the acceptability test. The resulting platform follows a three-tier architecture comprising a Presentation Tier (web and mobile interfaces), an Application/Logic Tier (five core processing modules), and a Data Tier (MySQL and Firebase). SwiftStaff centralizes staffing requests, enables real-time job postings, and allows students to receive push notifications and accept or decline offers based on skills and availability. Internal alpha testing of the prototype is complete, while beta testing and the weighted-mean acceptability evaluation are scheduled for the deployment phase. The prototype indicates that a locally adapted, mobile-first workforce solution built on a three-tier architecture is technically feasible and can reduce the inefficiencies of informal recruitment, thereby addressing the staffing gap in the region's hospitality sector. Ultimately, the study contributes a replicable architectural model for smart workforce pooling that may be extended to other tourism-dependent localities in the Philippines

Manpower pooling, On-call staffing, Mobile application, Hospitality, Western Pangasinan

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