Tour firms urge Petronas to reinstate their services

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KUCHING: The four tour agencies in Sarawak affected by Petronas’ recent centralisation policy are appealing for their services to be reinstated.

The agencies believe that tour agencies based in the state can serve the travel needs of Sarawak-based Petronas employees better.

According to Rewi Hamid Bugo of Pelancongan Merdeka, one of the companies affected, the four companies still hold the licence to service Petronas throughout the state, even though Petronas has stopped their services since January this year and centralised all travel services, which it then awarded to a company in Peninsular Malaysia.

“The obvious condition of this licence is to have invested heavily in local offices and local staff specifically to serve Petronas. All four companies have that.

“We understand that Petronas needed to do centralisation, it is a natural thing in business for cost-efficiency.

“However, we believe that Petronas staff who are based in Sarawak are much better served by local agents,” he told The Borneo Post when contacted yesterday.

Rewi pointed out that it would actually be more practical and cost effective for Petronas to use local agents.

“It is especially so (since) personal assistants call us any time of the night when their bosses or engineers need to travel the next day. We are just one phone call away. The turnaround time will be faster.

“Also, no matter how good electronic things are, there are times when bookings or billings have complication and it is best to be settled face-to-face,” he reasoned.

Rewi said the four companies had a meeting to discuss the matter yesterday morning, taking into consideration everybody’s points of view before collectively agreeing to make the appeal.

“The thing with air travel is that there is no way to charge more than the market rate. The

airlines regulate the cost of fares so we cannot be simply charging.

“Petronas is not losing any money by giving business to Sarawak agents. Petronas can go to any one of the four agents for their services. The rules of competition

will make sure that the agents will not try to be funny, which is a good practice.

“There is actually no loss there for Petronas, but job opportunities and revenues are lost for these four companies.

“We hope Petronas will consider revising the decision made to exclude the four agents from their supply chain,” he said.