We appear over the years to have had a fair degree of difficulty in making up our minds as to whether we will embrace tourism as a high-profile sector and do what is necessary not only to burnish the image of the industry but to take it to another level as far as its contribution to the national economy is concerned.
Granted, there is a ministry sharing three portfolios that include tourism – though the new government’s delay in replacing Manniram Prashad as the subject minister may be sending the wrong signals – and a Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA). Our eco-tourism product is supported by several hinterland resorts – some of which are badly in need of refurbishment – and, up until now, in word much more than in deed the government has repeatedly declared its commitment to the sector.
Somehow, however, when one looks at the bigger picture, Guyana does not qualify as a tourist destination in quite the same manner as Barbados or Jamaica, for example, though our own nature-based offerings are believed to no less marketable than the traditional sun, sand and sea offered elsewhere in the region. Not only do the numbers of our tourist arrivals pale into insignificance compared with those of other Caricom countries but the vast majority of our tourists are in fact Guyanese returning home either on holiday or on some particular mission and whom, in the course of their stay, might visit a resort or take advantage of being here to see the Kaieteur Falls.
And even if the focus of our tourism product is in the interior of the country rather than in Georgetown and other coastal areas, we are still confronted with a city which provides no incentive to have more visitors come to our shores. Georgetown presents just the sort of image that would serve to further undermine the country’s public image were more foreigners to visit here.
Recently, President Donald Ramotar gave a public commitment that his government will be making available the necessary resources to restore our capital to some semblance of good order and we must hope that honouring that commitment will be treated as a matter of the utmost urgency since the situation grows worse daily. It would be an obvious and absurd waste of resources if we were to invest the millions that it would take to properly market our tourism product based on contrived images of our capital only to have visitors arrive here and, having travelled through the city, clamour to get the next flight out.
The matter of marketing Guyana’s tourism product is one that has been alluded to by stakeholders in the sector repeatedly and over several years. One does not get the impression that government has been able to get its mind around what it takes to promote the country’s tourism product around the world even though information is readily available on the amounts that are spent by countries like Jamaica. What this means is that we may well have no idea as to whether such a pursuit is affordable or otherwise. More than that, marketing tourism is a specialist skill and the recent recommendation by the President of the Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana (THAG), Paul Stephenson, that we bring in specialists to show us just how that is done is one which should be taken seriously. So too should the view expressed by local craft producer Irene Bacchus-Holder that more official attention be paid to the development of the art and craft industry, an important medium for the marketing of Guyana abroad but a medium whose growth remains stunted on account of a lack of resources and a paucity of official institutional support.
In sum, while much has been said and continues to be said about building a strong and vibrant tourism sector the truth is that government has done more in the way of talking the talk than walking the walk. President Ramotar said rather a mouthful THAG’s Awards Ceremony last Saturday at the Princess Hotel. We must wait to see whether his administration walks the talk.
