The Bed and Breakfast (B&B) programme launched by the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) of Cricket World Cup was a response to what was felt to be a likely shortfall in hotel and guest house accommodation given the anticipated number of visitors to Guyana for the games scheduled to be played at the Providence Stadium.
From the inception the LOC made it clear that the B&B programme was an integral part of the hosting of the event. It went as far as setting up a special B&B Secretariat, interfacing with local lending institutions to assist persons seeking loans to ‘spruce up’ their rooms and apartments and dispatching its representatives to the homes of the various applicants for B&B status to ensure that the accommodation being offered met with the desired standards. And though LOC sources say that the secretariat had never given an undertaking that it would take responsibility for marketing the B&B facilities, most people appeared to be under the impression that the LOC would seek to ensure that the facilities were occupied.
It now transpires that with the Guyana leg of the Cricket World Cup underway several persons are, at least until now, left without bookings for the accommodation that they have made available. While it is not a question of heaping all the blame at the door of the LOC – which has had its hands filled with CWC concerns over other aspects of the preparations for the event – one cannot help but feel for those persons who will surely be disappointed – to say nothing about having being left out of pocket – if Cricket World Cup were to come and go without a guest turning up on their doorstep.
Hosting large numbers of visitors for an international event is an altogether new experience for Guyana and the success or otherwise of the B&B experience will serve as a barometer with which to measure our capacity to cope with events of this magnitude. One envisages, for example, that the B&B experience of Cricket World Cup could give rise to a new addition to the local accommodation sector which, who knows, may very well become popular with visitors to Guyana seeking the kind of holiday through which, from the vantage point of living with Guyanese families, they can experience the country from a different and far more rewarding perspective.
From the inception the LOC was always challenged in the matter of accommodation arrangements for Cricket World Cup. Apart from the fact that the number of hotel and guest house rooms available in Guyana is limited, it was always difficult to determine even the approximate number of visitors that would eventually come to Guyana for the event. The estimate of a number in excess of 30,000 visitors publicly announced by the LOC Chairman Karran Singh was clearly taken ‘with a pinch of salt’ by both the media and the public since their line of reasoning was that even with the recent hotel and guest house building and renovation boom and the aggressive B&B initiative the available accommodation would still fall well short of meeting the requirements of the anticipated number of arrivals. When it appeared that two other accommodation initiatives announced by Mr. Singh himself – a Trailer Park facility at the National Park and an outdoor facility by the local Scouts Association – had been quietly dropped, speculation deepened further over the accommodation issue.
One can argue, of course, that local B&B hosts would have been well advised – whatever the signals that had been emanating from the LOC – to attempt to make their own marketing arrangements for the accommodation facilities in which they had invested. Indeed, that is precisely what happened in some instances. On the other hand it is altogether reasonable to assume that some potential Guyanese hosts may simply not have been in a position to do their own marketing arrangements since many of them would have had no previous experience in making such arrangements.
In the circumstances it appears that the potential B&B hosts may have been looking to the LOC to undertake the responsibility for the marketing of the facilities. Some of them have argued that it was the LOC that initiated the B&B programme in the first place and that they may not have offered themselves as hosts at all had they been made aware in the first instance that they would have been required to sell their own accommodation. Whether the problem with which some potential B&B hosts are now saddled should be put down to Guyana’s inexperience in administering the various facets of international events of the magnitude of Cricket World Cup or whether the blame should be placed at the door of the LOC is not a question that can be conclusively answered at this stage. Sources within the LOC are contending that potential B&B hosts were notified “in good time” of the requirement that they make their own marketing arrangements. The B&B people are contending otherwise.
One imagines that at some stage after the Cricket World Cup ends we will benefit from an assessment of the performance of the LOC and the country as a whole as far as arrangements for the Cricket World Cup are concerned. Even then, it would perhaps be best to use the findings of such an assessment as a learning experience rather than as a means of apportioning blame. For the moment and for the good of Guyana we must stand behind the event and its organizers.