Record high air fares between the United States and Guyana and too few seats to meet travel demands could have a serious negative impact on visitor arrivals here and on Guyana’s economy if urgent steps are not taken to attract more services to the route and bring fares down according to Fort Lauderdale-based Guyanese Travel Consultant Hazeline Bostwick-Abrams.
“A point has now been reached where something has to give.
There is an immediate need for additional services between the United States and Guyana to take account of the prevailing travel demands,” Bostwick-Abrams told Stabroek Business during an interview earlier this week,
And according to Bostwick-Abrams the Government of Guyana ought to be concerned over the high fares and seat availability problems since these coincide with an enhanced focus on investment and tourism promotion, “two economic pursuits that depend heavily on the movement of people between the United States and Guyana. She said that the travel difficulties between the United States and Guyana associated with high air fares and seat availability had also come at a time when Guyanese in the diaspora appeared to be paying “a heightened level of interest in Guyana.”
“There is every indication that the building of the Guyana economy will continue to depend heavily on the inward movement of people and the ability to make reliable and relatively inexpensive travel arrangements is essential to facilitating that inward movement,” Bostwick-Abrams told Stabroek Business.
“Within the past year air fares between Guyana and the United States have more than doubled in some instances and this, coupled with the problem of seat availability has created “endless hassles” for passengers trying to get to Guyana, “A classic case of the high cost of travel between the United States and Georgetown is to be seen in the fact that passengers travelling from Miami to Port of Spain pay a fare of around US$179 while passengers travelling to Georgetown on the same flight pay as much US$479, What this means in effect is that it can cost as much as US$300 to travel from Port of Spain to Georgetown,” Bostwick-Abrams said.
Stabroek Business has confirmed that ticket costs for travellers between New York and Georgetown have jumped to levels in excess of US$1,000. Checks made by this newspaper earlier this week revealed that beginning August 1 there are no available seats on Delta Airlines between Port of Spain and Georgetown.
Meanwhile Bostwick-Abrams told Stabroek Business that current air fares between New York and Georgetown are considerably higher than those from New York to either Caracas or Sao Paulo. “Air fares are all about competition,” Bostwick-Abrams said.
“It is not difficult to see that those airlines currently providing a service between the United States and Georgetown are reaping the benefits of the absence of any real competition. The simple logic of cheaper air travel” is more visitors, more spending and the raising of the value of the Guyana dollar against the United States dollar, Bostwick-Abrams added.
And according to Bostwick-Abrams the country’s fledgling tourist industry could become “the first victim” of the current high air fares. “If we are interested in developing the local tourism market we need to attach the kind of importance to increasing the competition in the travel sector which is something that Barbados, Jamaica and the other tourist destinations in Guyana do.”
Earlier this week President Bharrat Jagdeo alluded to the problem of travel difficulties and said that government was considering charter applications in order to increase the number of services.
Bostwick-Abrams told Stabroek Business that the processing of those charter applications should be done as quickly as possible in order to increase the competition, make more seats available and push the fares down. “Even when one takes account of the importance of careful processing of matters of this nature you get the impression that, given the nature of the problem, a greater sense of urgency should be applied to the problem,”
According to Bostwick-Abrams the June 1 commencement of the Delta Airlines service between Guyana and the United States was still not enough to fill the void created by the termination of the North American Airlines service and the Constellation and Travel Span. She noted that while Delta had originally been scheduled to commence its service from July 1 the service had actually come on stream from June 1 because of the drastically reduced availability of seats between the United States and Georgetown. Bostwick-Abrams said that the Government of Guyana also needs to be concerned about the high fare levels that obtain for airlines providing service between the United States and Georgetown and with “bringing new services on board” in order to push fares down as quickly as possible.”
Meanwhile the Guyanese Travel Consultant told Stabroek Business that one of the regrettable outcomes of high fares and seat availability difficulties between the United States and Georgetown was that it had had the effect of altering the travel patterns of many Guyanese who have traditionally “come home” during holiday periods. “In the past these seasonal travelers, most of whom are ordinary Guyanese, were able to make their bookings and hold their seats and pay for their tickets when they get the money. That has now become a thing of the past. These days, once you make that booking you have to have that money to pay for your seat within twenty four to thirty six hours or lose it. What this means is that those travelling Guyanese who may not have the liquidity to pay for their seats well ahead of their travel dates cannot come home. Many of those traditional travellers have now become discouraged by these travel difficulties and have simply opted not to travel, she added.
