If there is one thing entrepreneurs have to be, it’s to be resourceful and nimble and Blanca Menchaca, CEO & co-founder of tours and activities platform BeMyGuest, had to find a way not only to save her business but also to grow and diversify.

And that meant cementing old partnerships and well as building new ones at home and abroad.

So despite closed borders in Singapore, she planned a trip in July combining business and family and covered four countries in over two to three months. “I felt it was important to visit some of our partners outside Singapore,” she said.

While there are Business Travel Passes that can be applied for, they are few and far between and come with restrictive conditions such as a controlled itinerary which Menchaca felt would not be conducive for her trips and desire to meet as many people as possible and seize new opportunities as they arose.

Blanca Menchaca: Departing from an empty Changi Airport.

Here’s how she had to navigate the different rules and restrictions, the contrasts between the situation in Singapore and Asia versus the rest of the world, which seems to have gotten on with living with Covid, and how operating in a city with closed borders remains a challenge especially if you are running a global travel business.

Q: How many trips have you made in this period – since March 2020 to now?

I have only been able to take one trip since March 2020 and due to all the new Covid quarantine restrictions, I decided to make the trip much longer than usual. It lasted weeks in each destination rather than days and it was packed with stops to multiple countries and cities when in the past it would have included only one or two.

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