SINGAPORE, 26 February 2020: Singapore Tourism Board and leading trade associations have launched a raft of support measures for the tourism industry to mitigate the economic impact of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Earlier in February a Stabilisation and Support Package gained approval in the national budget 2020 statement that will fund practical measures to help tourism weather the Covid-19 crisis.
The latest initiatives are led by Singapore Tourism Board (STB), SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) and Workforce Singapore (WSG), together with the Singapore Hotel Association (SHA) and the Food, Drinks and Allied Workers Union (FDAWU).
Support measures are rolling out to minimise potential retrenchment, upskill workers and redesign jobs to prepare the sector for when business demand returns.
Businesses will receive support in defraying the costs involved in business transformation and job redesigns, such as the Hotel Job Redesign Initiative and the Lean Enterprise Development Scheme.
Tourism companies will gain support to upgrade the capabilities of their workers through the Training Industry Professionals in Tourism (TIP-iT) fund that will pay 90% of training course fees and trainer fees up from the previous 50% cap.
In addition, funding for absentee payroll will be increased from SGD4.50/hour to 90% of the worker’s hourly basic salary, capped at SGD10/hour.
Employers in the tourism sector who send their workers for selected sector-specific training programmes in the next three months will receive the following: enhanced Absentee Payroll support at 90% of basic hourly salary capped at SGD10 per hour and enhanced course fee support at 90% of course fees. Training programmes will include courses in digital marketing.
Over SGD5 million will provide support for a Job Redesign Place-and-Train Programme for the Hotel Industry and a new Digital Marketing Place-and-Train Programme.
Hotels can receive salary support of up to 70% (capped at SGD2,000 per month per employee) for the training duration to defray the costs involved to reskill and prepare their workers for redesigned and enhanced roles.
The salary support duration has been extended up to six months from three months.
A Digital Marketing Place-and-Train Programme will help MICE, Attractions and Tour & Travel businesses adopt e-commerce and build up their digital presence for the longer term by absorbing the manpower and training costs involved to reskill and redeploy their workers into new digital roles through salary support and course fee funding.
Tourist guides will receive wage support of SGD1,000 over three months to assist with some of their basic living expenses. The tourist guide must be licensed, a Singapore citizen or permanent resident, and self-employed.
Applications for assistance can be filed 1 March to 30 April 2020.
Tourist guides can expect to receive wage support approximately within one month of the application. The wage support follows the waiver of tourist guide licence renewal fees for 2020, which STB announced on 2 February.
To encourage tourist guides to develop skills in critical areas such as digital literacy tourist guides are eligible for a training allowance of SGD600 when they complete 80 hours of training.
The programme will help guides can expand beyond mass-market guiding services into higher value-added activities such as becoming domain/precinct experts or even operating their own niche tours.
