I lived for more than 25 years in the Cayman Islands where tourism is almost 50% of the economy. In Grand Cayman, I was surrounded by tourism – my former wife was the Director of Tourism for many years; I visited many other tourism destinations – and during my last 10 years there I served as Executive Director of the country’s national festival, Pirates Week, funded by the Ministry of Tourism. Strictly speaking, I wasn’t a tourism official, but I was involved with tourists and tourism almost every day there for many, many years.
By phone, email or in person, I had frequent exchanges with tourists, travel agents, cruise ship personnel, airline employees, Department of Tourism staff, tourism consultants, tourism wholesalers – the whole nine yards. I listened. I asked questions. I paid attention. I learned some things about the tourism business.
To begin with, there are some fundamental issues when people are choosing vacation destinations. These days, the first one is often, “will it be safe for me and my family?” In fact, safety is what the travel consultants call “the must factor” in family tourism travel. Visitors will give a little on every other important issue – modern facilities; beach access; rent-a-car service; friendliness; even cost – but not safety. Travel agents will tell you that if your destination is pricey, but everything else is fine, the visitor might still pick you, but if he/she feels your destination is unsafe, even if it’s cheap, it drops out of consideration very quickly.
For tourists to the Caribbean, the word “beach” is a powerful magnet – on the way to the hotel they will ask “how far is the beach?” – and very important, as well, is the level of hotel accommodations, telephone, internet, television, dependable electricity, and air conditioning. High up on the list also is convenient air travel – particularly direct flights – as is cleanliness, rental cars, affordable shopping, and entertainment.
But in my time in Cayman, I learned there are also other factors at play, and these days an important one is concern for the environment. Tourists will actually boycott a destination completely if the government of the country is lax on environmental controls or turns a blind eye to the dumping of waste or chemicals in its rivers or adjacent seas.
Cruelty to animals, common in the Caribbean, is another sore point. Several times in Cayman, for instance, the Department of Tourism heard very angry complaints from visitors about residents’ ill-treatment of the green iguana common to the island.
On the basis of what is summarized above, it’s easy to see that when we’re talking about developing tourism in Guyana, as we’re currently doing, we’re deficient in almost every one of those factors.
Lack of safety – the high incidence of street crime – is one extremely high hurdle.
Coming out of Bourda Market a couple weeks back, I felt a fierce tug on my upper body and turned around to see a young man trying to pick up the gold chain on the walkway he had just pulled off my neck; he was simultaneously brandishing a knife to keep me at bay. It was a traumatic experience (ironically, I had written only a few weeks earlier about the pleasures of Bourda), but I told only a few friends about it. Something like that happening to a tourist would be a public relations disaster. It would spread like wildfire across the internet, and might even end up reported on Fox News.
Another major tourism hurdle is the prevalence of litter here. Particularly shocking in Georgetown, it would be simply unacceptable to visitors from North America and Europe, the source for 80% of Caribbean visitors. There are known examples of visitors to our country, confronted by the garbage and dead animals on our roads, who get out on the next available plane. I have personal knowledge of one such case.
Here’s the reality: As long as our present level of crime continues, visitors will avoid us. As long as a person’s jewellery can be snatched with impunity in broad daylight, visitors will avoid us. As long as electric power can go off in the middle of their favourite television shows, visitors will avoid us. As long as air connections here are difficult and limited, as long as litter abounds and the smell of dead animals is in the air, visitors will avoid us. Indeed, even the diaspora Guyanese will hesitate to travel here; we hear that trepidation expressed constantly by our friends and relatives abroad.
One of the misconceptions about tourists is that they are usually rich people with money to burn. In fact, most tourists have saved for their vacation, often for 2 years or more, or are doing it on credit, and they expect a certain level of creature comforts and health standards on their holiday. In addition, while there are certainly some wealthy tourists, they are in fact the ones who are most particular about all aspects of their holiday. From “no ice in the room” to “breakfast 5 minutes late”, the expectation standard of the wealthy visitor is usually far higher than his less affluent counterpart.
A vacationing Guyanese may be inclined to overlook failings in his hotel accommodation here; the tourist will not. It will be a heated issue, indignantly expressed, at high volume, for all to absorb. I have witnessed a few such clashes in hotel lobbies in Cayman, and they can be akin to a firestorm.
If you think about it, tourism is one of the few businesses where the consumer is actually buying a promise – it’s not something you can measure, or heft, or taste, or take for a test drive – and if you don’t deliver, or, in our case currently, can’t deliver on the promise, your business is in the sewer.
You and I walk the streets of Georgetown and learn to live with the roadside garbage. Visitors, let me tell you, will be irate. They expect a clean environment as a given, and they will be incensed by our frequent and copious litter.
And here’s the critical consequence: the tourism literature is crystal clear that there is a significant ripple effect from these encounters. The data shows that one satisfied tourist tells on average 10 other persons about a positive tourism experience; if the experience is negative, the number of people told about it jumps to 20. If the visitor is influential, or is particularly inflamed, the relay figure jumps even higher, and the complaints can reach the national media overseas.
And don’t be seduced by the foreign television entities, like WSEE, who come here and present a glowing picture for potential visitors. In these hyper communication days, people get the bad news along with fluff; our newspapers are online every day telling them. Certainly the guy in Minnesota who is a fanatic about wildlife and nature trails may be drawn to our eco-tourism facilities, but when he gets the information that he’s not safe here, and when it sinks in that he has to put up with flying through the night to get here at dawn, and that on our main roads he may have to step around garbage, he will not be getting on that plane to come here. Although the connection may not be obvious to all, that scenario explains the demise of wonderful attractions such as Shanklands and Baracara, and why the other eco-tourism attractions continue to struggle for business.
You can show pictures of Kaieteur Falls and the Iwokrama Canopy and the Rupununi Savannahs until the cows come home; it won’t matter much. You can run Mike Charles’ videos about our wonderful wildlife or aerial views of our magnificent rivers; it won’t matter much. You can have beautiful Guyanese women talking about our zesty cuisine and our luscious fruits; it won’t matter much.
In a nutshell, Guyana has significant tourism potential, but with our present level of crime, copious litter, erratic services, and air travel traumas, tourism in this country will be an uphill battle, and the persons in it will need very deep pockets. That’s not a negative view; that’s the harsh reality of modern tourism.
