Sabah tourist guides to start curating virtual tours

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah tourist guides have taken a step forward in promoting Sabah globally through well-curated virtual tours.

In collaboration with the Sabah Tourist Guides Association (STGA), the Sabah Tourism Board is hosting 20 Online Guided Tours on its Facebook Page from Jan 21-Feb 28.

STGA president Grace Leong said the online tours were developed in response to the inability to travel in 2021.

"It was indeed a challenge for our guides, to learn the system and bring forth an experience virtually.

"However, we managed to create several tours and they are now ready to go live.

"We are pleased that Sabah Tourism Board has approached us to debut these tours and subsequently, we hope that from this first round of sessions, there will be more awareness of these online guided tour offerings," she said.

Meanwhile, Sabah Tourism Board chief executive officer Noredah Othman said the efforts of Sabah tourist guides in upskilling themselves to conduct virtual tours.

"This is yet another avenue for us to showcase Sabah to the world. We too understand the challenges during the no-travel period in Sabah and having to utilise resources at hand.

"The idea of combining pre-recorded tours and being present to interact is equally a good method of presentation.

"Furthermore, Sabah Tourism is glad to be able to support the industry in whatever means.

"The first 2 sessions have already garnered more than 6,000 views accumulatively," she added in a statement on Monday (Jan 24).

Noredah added in anticipation of Sabah re-opening to international tourists, the Sabah Tourism Board would continue to provide destination awareness and continue to feed the public with information and messages about Sabah tourism.

The scheduled online-guided tours are available on Facebook at @sabahmalaysianborneo and would be free to view.

Subsequently, the tours would be chargeable at US$10 through www.sabahtouristguide.com.