Amid concerns that the high-profile Caribbean Sustainable Tourism Conference (STC) here had bungled by not making it affordable for Guyanese and youth in particular to participate, Tourism Minister Irfaan Ali yesterday said that many young people will be participating in one of today’s sessions before the confab wraps up.
He assured that youths would be fully involved in one of the general sessions which had been set aside for them from the inception. At the same time, he pointed out that the STCs are industry conferences that require participants to register and pay a fee before being accredited by the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) and not the Guyana Tourism Authority.
“The sustainable tourism conference is organized by the Caribbean Tourism Organization. It is an industry conference where you had to pay and you had to be registered and accredited to be in it”, Ali told Stabroek News yesterday.
He added “However we have a special speak out segment and at that segment we have arranged for a lot of youths …a lot of young people from the tourism department at the University of Guyana and other hospitality students to be present so they can have the experience and be a part of this historical event.”
Ali’s response came amid concerns that there were no students present at Sunday’s opening of the conference and that there were few local participants up to Monday’s sessions.
Secretary General of the CTO Hugh Riley had told this newspaper when questions about these concerns and the registration costs were raised, that local economic constraints were taken into account by planners of the event and it is the first time that youths were not involved. He went on to further explain that registration fees for the Guyana conference were “very different” compared to other conferences of a similar nature. He, however, said cost recovery was an unavoidable component of the conferences. “These conferences are not free to deliver. We have some very significant fixed costs, fixed to putting on a conference like this. We try the best way we can to meet those costs to the extent that we could put on a conference like this, we need to cover the expenses,” he had said.
Questioned about the lack of students and youths at the opening ceremony, Ali replied “The opening ceremony was by invitation only …we had limited time to complete the programme we had and we had to incorporate the important issues. This is a programme developed by the CTO and we just collaborate.”
He went on to say that the tourism ministry and by extension his government knows the value of youths to sustainability and is gearing the school curriculum to include tourism. “In terms of children we are initiating with the Ministry of Education to have tourism as part of the school curriculum to have a greater level of awareness and cultural change in the way we view tourism”, he said.
Participants, he said, should gear themselves for a vibrant youth session today.
