“Prior to destination reopening, the guide pool was reviewed and consolidated with the aim to establish: sufficient number of guides needed, gender equity, critical destination reopening training, as well as how to ensure sufficient work assignments, income, and mutual commitment.
With hindsight knowledge, there are few things we could have done differently to be better prepared in the future. Our Operations team could have been more proactive in checking group materialization rates and pax loading far in advance to avoid short notice cancellations. Guide salary benchmarking revisions and hiring of critical additional staff could have been done sooner. However, the circumstances during and right after the pandemic were incredibly unpredictable, and we rose up to the challenge as best we could.”
What are our solutions to these challenges going forward? Have we approached solving these issues?
“Significant progress has been made as our guide quality has improved by leaps and bounds and we have a diversified guide pool in place.”
We have:
- Provided both online and offline training as well as on-the-job training.
- Benchmarked and increased guide fees by 20% to ensure the remuneration we offer our guides remains competitive.
- Resumed fulltime contracted guides to cover our core customer needs.
- Offered additional health insurance policy for top performing freelance guides to attract and retain talents.
- Further reviewed and consolidated our guide pool to better match with business needs, and provided optional guide income as well as intensive training and development plans for our preferred guides.
- Conducted regular meetings between our guides and office teams to identify what’s working, what’s not, and identify opportunities for improvement. This has resulted in product and supplier enhancements and better customer service.
- Streamlined communication, guide payments and other processes and ensured sufficient Reservation and Operations staff are in place, so all bottlenecks and backlogs have been cleared.
- Reviewed our guide rewards and recognition to improve engagement and transparency.
