KOTA KINABALU: Sabah has gone virtual to revitalise the struggling tourism industry while waiting for international borders to reopen.
To ensure local tourist guides maintain their resilience amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the Sabah Tourism Board (STB) is working with the Sabah Tourist Guides Association (STGA).
The partnership was to reinvent travel tours and experiences aimed at both local markets and broader audiences via the internet.
The effort includes providing local tourist guides with STB-sponsored Online Guided Tour (OGT) courses since October last year, and to train them to become proficient in leading virtual tours.
STB chief executive officer Noredah Othman believed that tourist guiding is still necessary to give travellers a better understanding of places, people, and culture although the information is easily available online.
"The tourism industry has been hit hard by the pandemic. However, even in the absence of tourists, we must continue to look ahead and innovate to keep tourism going, and this is impossible without the assistance of our professional tour guides.
"As there are still restrictions on travel, OGT is the best way to show the world what Sabah has to offer.
"Therefore, local guides are and have always been the perfect advocates for our tourism because they are remarkable storytellers with the ability to attract tourists to visit Sabah," she said.
Noredah added the ongoing virtual tour collaboration showed the importance of local guides' role in promoting Sabah by conveying stories on many topics such as history, World War 2, traditional plants, wildlife, and even ancient stone monuments, among others.
"As we celebrate International Tourist Guide Day 2022, Sabah Tourism expresses gratitude to local tour guides for their unending dedication and contribution to tourism promotion.
"At STB, we are always ready to support our guides and STGA," she said.
Such support include backing STGA in their recent bidding to host the 2024 World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations Convention.
Although it lost to Italy with a mere four votes, STGA nonetheless managed to put Sabah on the world tourism map.
Sabah has about 1,200 licensed tourist guides, with 650 of them being STGA members.
STGA president Grace Leong said tourist guides are instrumental in promoting tourism, stressing their commentaries or narration of destinations are critical in providing information to tourists while on a guiding assignment.
"In Sabah, our tourism is based mainly on Eco-Tourism. Without a tourist guide, tourists will not understand or have minimal knowledge of the destinations visited, including plants, wildlife, and culture.
"Tourist guides are indeed indispensable in the Sabah tourism package. In collaboration with STB, the association has conducted virtual walking tours and the ongoing OGTs on Facebook.
"This will aid in promoting Sabah as a destination of choice globally. The OGTs have drawn thousands of viewers since the programme started on Jan 21 this year."
She added STGA is helping to connect tourist guides with various online platforms to enable them to earn an income through OGTs and supplement this with in-person guiding when tourism doors reopen.
"Yes, we are resilient. While many of our tour guides are now working full-time or part-time in other jobs, we are still waiting for our international borders to reopen once the pandemic has passed," said Grace.
In conjunction with International Tourist Guide Day tomorrow, STB and STGA are also collaborating with Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) on an online webinar focusing on "Recovery and Growth of Tourism: The Role of Tourist Guides."