Karen Abrams holds an MBA from UC San Francisco. She is a Marketing and Small Business Consultant in the US and Caribbean. Karen is also a partner in a party rental business in Decatur, GA.
Part II
Guyana has had its fair share of service delivery problems as far as its tourism industry is concerned. A satisfying tourist experience adds value to the product since the satisfied customer invariably indulges in the sort of trumpet-blowing that attracts others. The tourism experience, therefore, must match, even exceed customer expectations. The national agencies in both the public and private sectors that are responsible for shaping and marketing the tourism product must understand that the departing tourist is perhaps the best potential advocate for the industry. In fact, recommendations by family and friends of visitors are the most powerful marketing tool for the tourism sector. The “low hanging fruit” in the tourism marketplace are visiting overseas-based Guyanese.
Many of them return to take care of “business” which requires their presence in Guyana. These visitors may not save the hotel industry from its difficulties since most of them are accommodated and fed at family homes. Nonetheless, they spend quite a bit on travel, entertainment and food. They are also important to the tourist industry insofar as they serve as ambassadors who, in many cases, actively and aggressively promote Guyana as a holiday destination.
I believe that the real weakness in what I understand is a policy decision that Guyana will be aggressively promoted as a tourist destination lies in our failure to recognize that tourism is truly everybody’s business; that it is not the business of the government, or the hoteliers or the resort owners only. Tourism is the business of every Guyanese and the promotion of the industry must begin at home rather than abroad,
If Guyana is to become a popular tourist destination the functionaries in the Ministry of Tourism and the Guyana Tourism Authority must walk in the shoes of a typical visitor in order to envisage both visitor expectations and the visitor experience.
They must: visit other tourist destinations in order to experience and seek to emulate high standards. They must travel to the Cheddi Jagan International Airport to see what, all too often, are grim-faced, melancholy attendants and unsmiling immigration and customs officials. They must experience the coarseness of the touting by taxi drivers; the often reckless use of the roads by those drivers; and along the route to Georgetown they must witness the eyesore of homeless people. These experiences apart, they must also endure what is very often the low standards of courtesy that prevail at some hotels.
If these may seem like little things they are not. These experiences help to form “first impressions” and, difficult as it may seem to believe, those impressions often tend to stay with the visitor. More to the point these deficiencies result from little more than an absence of will among the stakeholders in the industry.
During my own visits to Guyana I am certainly no tourist but I still look to my country to afford me the courtesies that it would offer any visitor; and I doubt that any visitor would take kindly to being attacked by stray dogs on Camp street – as I have been during an early morning run. I doubt too that they would be impressed with a trash-infested sea wall in close proximity to the prestigious Meridien Pegasus Hotel. By the same token the badly kept avenue dividing the eastern and western carriageways of Camp street is a less than inspiring sight with its trash-infested drain the contents of which are dumped on the parapets in hideous clumps whenever those responsible are inclined to clean it.
I believe that a point has long been reached when the stakeholders in the industry must do a reality check; and I care little for the views of those who suggest that these are not the “politically correct” things to say. I am not a politician. I have no axe to grind.
I am simply a patriotic Guyanese who worries as much as the next person – sometimes even more – about what needs to be done to take Guyana forward. Even if, for example, there are those who may bristle over some of the views that I have expressed I would be more than satisfied if after the bristling is done the Minister of Tourism quietly embraces whatever is found to be relevant and valid in my views.
On that note I believe that once-a-week or so the Minister and his advisors should come out of their offices and simply walk the streets, observe the environment, talk to businessmen, to vendors, to commuters, to schoolchildren. They should visit the Botanical Gardens, walk the length of Camp Street from the sea wall to Russell Street, Avenue of the Republic, Stabroek Market Square and Water Street, Church Street and Main Street; They should take a close look at our city and at the quality of the product that we are selling to visitors and if they cannot find several areas in which improvements need to be made then our government and our country are getting a raw deal and we will continue to dream about being a tourist destination but the dreams will never materialize.
I have heard it said that the Georgetown municipality is responsible for the physical maintenance of the city. I believe that rather than blaming the municipality or any other institution for the existing conditions what we need to do is to determine whether the problem does not inhere in the absence of a strategy of inclusiveness in our tourism planning. If all the stakeholders understand the importance of a clean, welcoming city and if enough emphasis is placed on delivering that product then the municipality will simply have to do its job. Though we are loathe to admit it we take the state of the city for granted and that is the primary reason that it is as it is.
And yet, for all the faults that I see, two weeks ago I ran into two Guyanese acquaintances in the Guyana West Indian Grocery store on Covington Highway in Decatur, GA who shared with me plans to return home for Easter. They had heard about the recent tragic and troubling events in Guyana but they are coming anyway because Guyana is home.
Even as this article is being read our American client has visited Guyana and returned to the United States. My mother plans to visit Guyana this summer.
My own optimism about Guyana perhaps makes me a less than dispassionate observer. I understand the outlook of Guyanese in this part of the world and the disposition of investors well enough to continue to believe that we can and will bounce back from the present difficult situation. If this is to happen, however, there are some things that must change.
We must abandon this propensity for the loud-mouthed sensationalizing of every issue, forgetting in the process that there are audiences to our antics, audiences that make judgments that impact on the welfare of our country. Of course the crime situation gives cause for concern but even amidst the political brouhaha of ‘scoring points,’ it occurs to me that all the political sides have expressed a commitment to working to put an end to the problem.
Whether it’s eco-tourism today, sports tourism tomorrow, or Investment tourism the next day, the recipe for success is the same. We must plan for the entire tourism experience and planning must include a component that focuses on communication stakeholders.
The point is that unless we understand who the stakeholders are and unless we hold each of them to their specific obligations to the tourism industry we are really doing no more than chasing our tails.
