Concerns over visitor safety in the wake of the recent attacks at Lusignan and Bartica by gunmen that left twenty-four people dead “have all but shut down several of the country’s interior nature resorts,” compounding an already difficult situation for the country’s tourism sector, according to Managing Director of the Roraima Group of Companies Captain Gerry Gouveia.
“Even in what we consider to be normal times resort occupancy is around 20 per cent. Occupancy is now at zero and I believe that it will be at zero for a while, ” Gouveia told Stabroek Business.
Stabroek Business understands that the island resort of Baganara, one of the country’s more popular resorts, has been effectively closed following the Bartica killings. This newspaper has been informed that aircraft transporting security forces to Bartica in the wake of the killings there utilized the airstrip on the privately-owned island and that the resort itself had been directly affected as a result of the Bartica shootings.
In his interview with Stabroek Business Gouveia said that other interior resorts had effectively been shut down following killings.
But Gouveia, whose Roraima Group includes Arrow Point, a nature resort in the Kumuni Creek, a tributary of the Demerara River, told Stabroek Business that the current troubling security situation was only one aspect of the serious challenge facing the tourism industry. “Naturally, we need to address the security situation as an absolute priority if visitor confidence is to be restored. The concerns of the industry, however, include other important issues that are also critical to its survival and its viability,” Gouveia said. “The numbers that are coming in to Guyana are already low and VAT further reduces our competitiveness, he added.
“Before the advent of VAT all of the small hotels with less than fifteen rooms and the resorts were exempt from the hotel tax. We need to go back to that situation because we are dealing with a pioneering industry that is struggling to survive even in the absence of any taxes,” Gouveia said.
And according to the Roraima Managing Director the time is long overdue for the authorities to “get a move on” with the regulation of the tourism industry. “The Guyana Tourism Authority must begin to rapidly advance its schedule for the enactment of legislation that will allow for an effective oversight mechanism for the industry,” he said.
“As a member of the Board of the Guyana Tourism Authority I have been advocating for regulation and standards for the past four years and for some reason all the Authority appears to want to do is to involve itself in things other than seeking to make sure that the industry is safe.
At a very fundamental level we need to ensure that people who are operating in the tourist industry are operating at a particular level,” he added.
Asked about the current status of legal measures to regulate the tourist industry Gouveia said that he understood that draft legislation had been sent to the Attorney General’s Chambers. “However, as far as I can tell there is no real movement at this time towards the enactment of legislation” he said.
Noting that a primary prerequisite for the viability of the tourism sector was its ability to guarantee the safety and security of visitors Gouveia said that it was important that the authority begin to put in place regulations that dealt with the competence of key functionaries in the industry. “We have to ensure that tour operators taking tours to interior areas know the routes, and have the safety systems and medical systems and emergency evacuation facilities and that is the responsibility of the Guyana Tourism Authority,” Gouveia said.
And Gouveia also raised questions about the capacity of the Guyana Tourism Authority in its present state to effectively pursue its mandate. “It was the private sector that advocated for the creation of the Guyana Tourism Authority. We advocated for an Authority that was adequately staffed and funded and technically competent to ensure that the industry operate to international standards. What we have is not what we advocated.”
Asked about the role that the aviation industry has been playing in support of the security forces Captain Gouveia said that private aircraft owners had been working in collaboration with the police, the military and the civilian authorities in the movement of security personnel and the ferrying of injured persons. “Actually, the support that the authorities are receiving from the private sector at this time is a reflection of our own concern about the security situation and our commitment to doing everything that we can to help restore a condition of normalcy,” Gouveia said.
