Factory tours a boon for businesses, tour operators
TOUR operators must know where their strength lies. A busload of passengers can be transported to many places on a day’s excursion and these can be nearby within the same district.
If taken to a factory where groceries are produced or processed, visitors can buy at factory prices. Passengers could buy fresh food at the lowest prices. Savings can be huge for frozen seafood that commands premium prices.
The itinerary can include warehouses or factories that manufacture clothing, shoes, costume jewellery, consumer products, household items, electrical and electronic appliances, as well as visits to cottage industries that make handicraft, cakes, biscuits or keropok (snacks).
There are hundreds of factories in every district. It is up to the tour operators to collaborate with the factory management to facilitate public visits. Safety can be ensured as viewing could be from a distance from the machinery.
Such an arrangement will raise the standard of participating factories, as the whole facility could be spruced up for public display. The money spent is a great investment and more effective than traditional advertisements. It will also make the workers feel proud of their jobs.
This can be a colossal potential for factory tours. In Balakong, Selangor, more than 3,000 factories are located in four industrial parks, namely Balakong Jaya, Selesa Jaya, Taming Jaya and Kampung Baru Balakong.
In the Klang Valley, there are thousands of factories that people could visit and shop at. Nationwide, hundreds of tour buses can depart daily for shopping excursions, each with its own itinerary, to visit different factories, warehouses and cottages.
Such excursions would be popular if offered free of charge or for a minimal fare with lunch included, provided tour operators are allowed to earn shopping commissions and passengers are not scammed.
Tour operators could provide free shopping excursions if the Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry lifts the ban on tour guides and tour operators from receiving shopping commissions, with the condition that prices are the same for all customers, whether they are brought there by bus or arrive on their own.
The factory management would be happy to collaborate with tour operators as customers could return by joining the excursion again or using their own transport. It is high time the authorities relooked at zero fare tours, which were taboo involving foreign tourists but beneficial for locals.
The main reason tour operators do not explore shopping excursions is due to the regulations stating that a tour bus with passengers must have a tour guide unless exempted, and tour operators and tour guides are not allowed to accept shopping commissions.
But over the past decades, tour operators and tour guides joined foreign tour leaders in pocketing shopping commissions, confident that no action would be taken as long as there are no complaints.
Antiquated rules, such as forcing tour bus passengers to pay and listen to a tour guide they do not want or need, must be revamped. It has stunted the growth of domestic tours since this regulation was introduced in 1975.
Today, many people use smartphones to read, look at pictures and watch videos, and visitors opt for apps to navigate destinations on their own. Surely thousands of residents would be eager to join free shopping excursions when offered creatively by tour operators.
Buses operating daily nationwide carrying thousands of shoppers to buy goods or freshest food at factory prices will contribute to a rise in sales, production and employment, and tour companies staying afloat.
Y.S. CHAN