It has been a crazy December, so this is an overdue post. 

 Anyways, really grateful for STB team to plan the SingapoRediscover Voucher (SRV) to be non-stackable. This way, families would be inclined to look for activities that could utilize most of the value and thus look for tours. Due to the unplanned surge for the vouchers, we had a great December rush. Managing my tours alone, we have served close to 200 guests on December alone. Really really happy. This is probably the compensation for the year of naught. 

The team is great, as we have the 4 pronged approach with Boat Tour, Cooking Class, Bike Tour and Educational Tour, the team is unknowingly practicing agile approach to churn out a series of minimal viable products in a month. How we worked is that we have a rough idea in mind, market the series out, receive bookings, then plan the content accordingly to the order of bookings. With every tour we ask for constructive feedback and improve on tour experience, by the 4th or 5th tour, the product is more of less complete and then subsequently it's just improvements on the way and scaling up. 

Grateful also that Dec tours are not too affected by rain, as it does either before or after the tour, or at least occurs at the non-crucial parts. Many times, the weather are doable for us. Really really really grateful, as it's important to run the tours since family groups have less elasticity to rescheduling. 

In midst of the tour rush, I'm also grateful for friends who constantly arrange for catch ups. 

So now is 2021, spent the New Year on a staycation. Now to plan for the next wave of Tour Products, and continuity plan, for the support we have is ending soon in March. We have to keep the company afloat for the year assuming 8 days of confirmed stream of revenue in a month. We need to plan to fill the weekdays slots for this to work. We gotta increase efforts in outreach to incorporate event planning and corporate team building. We gotta make international schools and fill the holiday slots as much as possible. And we need to start cushioning for overheads without support.

I'm happy though, that I decided to continue pressing on to stay in the industry, and rather that repackaging, we came out with new products that caters to the Domestic Tourism. We had reimagined it such that we have deviated away from the typical tour guiding style and adopted facilitation framework doing tours too. All in all it's rather apt too that I had taken Advanced Certification in Learning and Performance as well as Agile Facilitation so that I could incorporate the newly gained knowledge into action. 

I guess 2020 wasnt doing well to most people. I'm glad some of you had also accepted the fact that the pandemic will lurk on and new norms are being formed. Some of you broke out of the comfort zone and trailblazed uncharted paths, venturing into unprecedented markets or methods of working. I still feel sad for most people struggling especially in the nightlife scene, supporting as much as I could afford. 

And for my trainees, I felt the anxiety starting to kick in for them. Some started asking questions on relevance of knowledge, how to anticipate what is useful in the future, how to gain transferable skills, and so on..... I guess those would be anxiety of redundancy and insecurity of inferiority. I can't do much too, for I am not the best person to advise on this since I'm stubbornly clinging on to the same trade despite a diminishing hope of international arrivals. 

Well, wet start of 2021 with 2 full days of rain. Que Sera Sera, jiayous! Still looking forward for the exciting journey this year could bring. Towards a stronger 2021!