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To celebrate International Women's Day on March 8, we're profiling some of the incredible women entrepreneurs in hospitality and tourism who we have the pleasure of collaborating with regularly. All profiles in this series are written by Tami Fairweather.
"The world seems a bit larger when you are born and raised on an island," says Pei Shyuan (P.S.) Yeo, Founder of Everyday Tour Company. Even when it’s an island as multi-culturally diverse as Singapore, the Southeast Asian city-state where she grew up.
P.S. is an adventurer at heart. For nearly a decade, she studied, traveled, lived, and worked throughout Europe and the U.S. Often a stranger in a new place, she found that the best way to make friends and experience local culture was through food.
Seeking a way to combine her love of the way food connects people as a livelihood, she went to culinary school after returning home in 2013. Though she found professional success working in Michelin-starred restaurants and hosting pop-ups, she wasn’t interested in pursuing her own restaurant.
A friend suggested running culinary tours, and something clicked. “I knew from my travels that we do things differently with food here, and I could find a special way to share it.”
Dating as far back as the 1800s, immigrant communities in the then-British colony made a living by selling their traditional foods on the street from makeshift kitchens, adapting recipes to suit local tastes with local ingredients. The practice, colloquially known as “hawking” (a term borrowed from British English to describe the act of selling something), became a dominant part of food culture. In the decades following Singapore’s independence in 1965, the government built open-air food markets to house hundreds of hawker stalls in one place, each serving a different neighborhood.
There are now over 150 “Hawker Centres” in Singapore. In 2020, Hawker Culture earned the country its first spot on the UNESCO List of “Intangible Culture Heritage of Humanity.” The Centres offer diverse cuisines that reflect the country’s multiculturalism, including Indian, Chinese, Malay, Indonesian, British, Brunei, Japanese, Thai, and Peranakan dishes. There’s something for everyone, and they serve as communal living rooms where people from all walks of life gather to eat and socialize.
“It’s very inclusive,” says P.S. about Hawker Culture. It’s also loud, busy, and overwhelming for those unfamiliar. Casual visitors often don’t know how to order or what to eat, so they end up observing for a while before opting to eat elsewhere. Group tours do the same; too large for the tiny stalls that often only fit six people at a time, and reservations aren’t accepted.
P.S.’s idea was to bring only a few guests to allow for a deeper experience. It’s a challenge for anyone to choose from so many amazing specialty dishes, many of them from mom-and-pop shops. She brings guests to stalls that specialize in one or two family recipes that have been prepared the same way for generations. Her tours are private and intimate, allowing visitors to see how the dishes are made up close and converse with the chefs. “We get to know their history, struggles, and how their special dishes came to be.” And, of course, eat.
P.S. is intentional about spreading the love to vendors beyond those that get the most media attention, frequently visiting different vendors to reveal more stories and connections. “When my guests feel confident enough to return on their own after a tour, eager to try more stalls and talk to more vendors, I know it’s been a success,” she says.
While Singapore’s modern reputation is that of skyscrapers, finance, and tech (heavily influenced by the movie Crazy Rich Asians), the majority of the country’s population lives in social housing. In all of her travels, P.S. has never encountered another public model like the self-contained, modern housing communities in Singapore. Inspired to share more about how regular people eat, play, and live (hence the name “Everyday Tour Company”), she added a Social Housing Tour, which has been a hit with more curious travelers, especially those who come to Singapore through Outlier Journeys.
Running a tour company isn’t easy, and it was particularly hard during the pandemic. With the city largely shut down to visitors, she took contract assignments from her previous management consultant career. Though fulfilling and meaningful, the work didn’t create the same joy and purpose she’d found in the company she’d started. It was a conscious decision for her to return back to the travel industry, but “to be able to expand the work, I needed to scale,” she says, while continuing to uphold her values of creating more employment opportunities for women and paying her team well, regardless of gender.
To aid her growth, she sought out a Singapore-based female executive leadership coach who guided her to self-reflect, reframe her success mindset, and find the courage and direction to elevate her business to a more sustainable level. “You only live once; you have to do what you love,” she affirms.
Most of all, P.S. is grateful that there will always be more layers to explore in her home. “Old, new, East, and West come together so beautifully on this island,” she says. She knows firsthand that the best travel experiences prioritize quality over quantity. “You don’t have to see everything on one trip,” she explains. “In fact, it’s good to leave something for another time, right?”
With excellent nonstop flights from many North American cities and home to one of the world's best airlines, Singapore is an ideal gateway for longer trips through Asia. We encourage our travelers to pause and spend some time in Singapore, at least 3 nights, and discover the destination with P.S. and her guide team before continuing on with their trip. Connect with Kirsten to get in touch and include Singapore in your travel plans.
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