'Can they really watch me talk for the next one hour?': Tour guide who learnt to conduct virtual tours

SINGAPORE - Mr Basirun Mansor, 31, a tour guide with Monster Day Tours, is looking forward to seeing customers in real life now. 

Before Covid-19, I was a freelance tour guide. During the pandemic, looking for jobs was really tough because we were not sure exactly how things were going to work out.

I did other jobs such as delivery for Q-Express and Grab, to help my family. My wife is an art teacher and we have a four-year-old daughter.

Eventually, I was very lucky that Monster Day Tours offered me a full-time job during the circuit breaker, which is how I managed to get back on track.

In phase two, physical tours were not feasible, so we converted many of our physical tours of locations such as Kampong Glam and Chinatown into virtual tours. These were pre-recorded or live-streamed, and we also did 360-degree virtual tours.

It was hard initially because I wasn't used to holding on to a gimbal (a pivoting suspension device that stabilises a camera) and acting like a vlogger.

We had to think about people's attention spans. Can they really watch me talk for the next one hour? So we made the tour as interactive as possible and we had games to make sure it could be relevant and interesting for the audience, who would mostly be locals.

Constantly upgrading your knowledge of the tours' content is important to sustain through this period of time. Some guides online only like certain sites, but when it comes to limited jobs during the pandemic, that's when you're on the losing end.

Usually in the virtual tours, we'll share some fun facts. For example, when we go to Kampong Glam and pass the Sultan Mosque, I'll tell them about the glass bottles that are part of the mosque. The reason is because the Muslim community wanted to contribute to building the mosque, so they donated their glass bottles for the construction.

By the end of the tour, the locals will be convinced and happy that they learnt a lot of hidden facts about the places they have visited.

Last year, in an event partly organised by the Singapore Tourism Board, we had a few hundred overseas visitors joining the Zoom session of the virtual tour. We took them along the Singapore River towards Marina Bay Sands. It felt so real because it was a live commentary and video, as though they were walking along with me by the river and Marina Bay.

A few months ago, I caught Covid-19. It was severe and lasted four days, during which I had to get a replacement as I couldn't go for tours.

Now that we're back, we are slowly moving towards more physical tours. Before the pandemic, I used to have 20 to 50 people joining a tour, so I'm looking forward to seeing people in real life as opposed to virtually. It brings back good memories from the time when Singapore was busy with tourists and visitors.

What I will remember most about these two years is not only how many restrictions we had to follow during the pandemic, but also how we managed to survive. What is really important is not taking things for granted.