Success is a matter of Attitude

The previous group was sent yesterday. Checked in hotel then for a rest and a new group is coming in to Malaysia for a 4-day visit.

Clearing out some accounting issue and updating all figures over previous tour guiding, preparing for the report to Assigner.

Working as a tourist guide, we can have 2 different atitude towards our job. One of the attitude is we consider ourselves as an employee and the tour agents as our employer. The second attitude is to consider ourselves as a freelance business owner who provide tour guiding services to the tour agents.

The former attitude will make us request for more and feel unhappy if the tour agents do not carry out some of their duty accordingly. On the later attitude, we will request less and prepare to provide more as the competitive tool. The tour agents are our customers and the is saying that customer is always right.

On the matter on how to justify the rights of the customer, then it is the relationship of supply and demands that play an important role. Currently, the demand on tourist guide services is getting lesser as lesser groups and groups are getting lesser in number of pax too. On the other hand, the government is allowing for more and more people to go for tourism study and obtaining the tourist guides license. As such, the quantity of tourist guides available is far exceeding the market demand. When the demand drops and the supply increased, the price drop and so it does in the tour guiding fee.

If we think tourist guides are employee to tour agents, then the job is only temporary and the temporary workers law has to be appliable. Nevertheless , if we consider tourist guides as individual business owner who provide the services to tour agents, then more free development would have to be given. On top of that, there must be some helping hand from the government as the project of tour guiding is too small, which it can be completed in a few days. This means that a lot of individual can simply interupt in giving the service illegally and causing an imbalance in the supply demand balance point.

As I fully believe, Success of a person depends on his/her Attitude toeards the job, Success of an industry depends on the firm standardisation of the government too. The Malaysia tourism industry is currently still in the "confusing stage", there are many things that the local operators have to do to improve the quality.

The government would have to clearify if tourist guides-tour agents relationship is employee-employer or service supplier-service requisitor. Only after this relationship is clearly identified, then we can start to look into the next step of standardisation without grey area.