Tourism players in Sabah work together to make ends meet

Henry Lo

KOTA KINABALU: Pressured by the slow economy amid the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, tourism players and many other industries have to resort to diversifying their business just to stay afloat.

For a group of tourism and homestay owners, they had to venture out of their businesses to generate income by selling meals.

Now, with the economy reviving, and tourism slowly back, they had come together to offer a one stop 'shopping' destination that offered customers tour packages complete with accommodation choices, activities, meals and souvenirs.

Owner of Superb Holidays Sdn Bhd, Henry Lo said that this concept of business was to bring industries together and to work as one.

"This way, we share our expertise with our customers and in return, share the profit together," he said.

How this concept works was that company A provides tours while company B was in charge of homestays, he said.

"Company C offers meals for guests and Company D provides selections of souvenirs, and so on and so forth," Lo said.

He said they were now made up of only six business owners, some of whom were tour operators, restaurateurs and some, homestay owners.

He said the reason why they decided to work as one was so that apart from just giving customers one product - tour packages, they could also provide affordable homestay lodgings, food selection and choices of souvenirs to bring home.

"It is a win-win situation for us businesses, as well as customers because they get more value with their money," said Lo, who had been in business for over 10 years.

He said they hope to work with more local homestays, handicraft makers, tour operators, eateries and other relevant fields to complement and strengthen this venture.

He said the industries must work together to revive the economy and to recover from the difficulties faced over the past two years.

Lo said many could not sustain and had to shutter, but now, they could rise up once again, if they were willing to adopt this new way of doing business.

"Small and medium enterprises are very much welcomed. It doesn’t matter how small your business is but as long as your ideas work, and you are willing to be part of this, we can survive and grow," he said.

Businesses who wish to get more information about this can contact Lo at 013-851 9889, or Reggie Lee, who was in charge of homestays at 014-679 6396.