Tourism investment and training consultant Maureen Paul has told Stabroek Business that she feels that the sector is in the doldrums.
And while she shares the view expressed by former Commonwealth Secretary General Sir Shridath Ramphal regarding the fragility of the tourism product in the Caribbean she believes that it is entirely possible for countries to promote tourism while at the same time “maintaining their dignity and enhancing their image” as states in the international community.
“Of course it is true that tourism by its very nature is a fragile product and that no country ought really to build its entire economic base or even most of it on tourism. I believe, however, and Sir Shridath himself acknowledges this – that we have to take tourism seriously since the well-being of hundreds of thousands of Caribbean people depends on it. What we have to do is to ensure that we create legislation and create regulations that ensure that our people and our countries are not compromised by tourism. We need to keep our eye on the prize of being taken seriously within the international community,” Paul said.
The former Executive Director of the Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana (THAG) , who now runs her own consultancy, Hospitality Management Services, told Stabroek Business that she believed that the Guyana tourism sector was at “an all time low.” She said that most of the local investors in the tourism sector were involved in one or another facet of the industry as a “side line” since they were substantively involved in other areas of the economy. For any number of reasons including a shortage of serious capital I doubt that we are likely to see any major investment in the growth and development of the existing facilities in the near future,” Paul said.
According to Paul while private investment in the hotel sector prior to last year’s Cricket World Cup now meant that there were now more hotel rooms available in Guyana, “the other side of the coin is that we now have a larger number of hotels most of which have a lower occupancy rate. Paul said that the current difficulties confronting the hotel sector probably have to do with a failure to undertake feasibility studies and to take advice before investing in the sector. “It ought to have been pretty clear that Cricket World Cup was only for a limited period and any sound investment in the hotel sector ought, surely, to have taken account of how those rooms would be filled once the event had ended.”
Asked what it would take to reinvigorate the tourism sector in Guyana Paul said that there are several key elements that were missing from the sector. “In the first instance there is the issue of regulation and that can only really emerge out of legislation. Then there is training. There is no professional training regimen for the tourism industry in Guyana. Then there is marketing. However much we insist to the contrary the fact is that we have no well thought out systematic plan for marketing Guyana’s tourism product in a sustainable manner.”
And according to Paul, Guyana’s tourism product was unlikely to make any real impact on the country’s economy “except we can attract real investment” into the sector from outside Guyana. She said that if that level of investment is to be attracted the onus was on government to create the enabling environment, “that is, the incentives and infrastructure encourage such investment.”
Meanwhile, Paul told Stabroek Business that she believes that there ought to a re-evaluation of the existing system in place to assess investors’ entitlement to duty-free concessions and to evaluate business plans. “One is not always entirely sure that these assessments and evaluations are realistic and what we find is that some of the decisions that arise from those evaluations are the subject of controversy. All of us are aware of cases where frustrated investors spend a great deal of time and effort trying to determine the reasons for the decisions that are made in relation to things like duty-free entitlements and seeking to get decisions that do not go in their favour changed.
Stabroek Business has learnt from the Guyana Tourism Authority that there has been an increase in visitor arrivals in Guyana during the first quarter of 2008 compared with the first quarter of 2007. However, Paul pointed out that visitor arrivals could not be used as the sole barometer of the state of health of the tourism industry, first, because, a large percentage of the visitors cannot really be classified as tourists and, secondly, because visitor arrivals do not gainsay the policy and other critical issues that constrain the growth of the local tourism sector.
