This year, small business representatives at the Jubilee GuyExpo event had much to say about how it impacted on customer patronage when compared with their customary day-to-day trading in arcades, on pavements, in malls and the like.
It has to be said that for all the fuss that is usually made about GuyExpo and its potential for the creation of a more convivial trading environment, the small and micro businesses that find their way there try to take advantage of what they regard as a lucrative but limited window through which to reach the throngs of potential customers visiting.
Even if, every year, small vendors can be heard grumbling about the price of vending space at GuyExpo (this year was no exception) they find their way there anyway, knowing that the alternative market opportunities are sufficiently limited as to make GuyExpo a compulsory event as far as attendance is concerned.
The small vendors also knew only too well that the Jubilee event would bring another element into the market, diaspora Guyanese hunting souvenirs to take back to their adopted homes. In this contest this newspaper noted what, from our recollection of what had obtained in previous years, in some instances were distinct price hikes. Interestingly enough—and this is something that both the vendors and the various business support organizations might wish to ponder—concerns among consumers appeared to be centred much more around product quality than price.
This is not an unimportant point. Local craftspeople are inclined to make arguments about the intrinsic value of handmade craft items through the problem with this arguments is that if the so-called hand-made items cannot match those that are made by moulds and machines in neatness there is a likelihood that the producer will lose out. It is not this newspaper’s view that visitors for the Jubilee event found a sufficiently wide variety of high-quality souvenirs.
We found too that for the week of the Jubilee event and beyond the urban transportation system (we are unsure as to what applied in the rural areas) became blighted by arbitrary fare hikes. Several days prior to Independence Day taxi fares for drops around the city had been increased by as much as 80 per cent and once the Jubilee ‘season’ of night time events got into full swing some taxi drivers were demanding $1,000 for a ‘short drop’ in a manner that dared you to protest their charge.
Unsurprisingly, our Jubilee Anniversary guests sought as much opportunity to eat out, and it seemed that most restaurants sought to put their best foot forward as far as both quality and range were concerned. On two separate occasions, however, guests for the Jubilee in the company of staff from this newspaper were denied the pleasure of a good Guyanese meal in the early afternoon since the restaurant had closed for the day some hours earlier. In one instance an attendant sheepishly told us that the establishment had run out of food. In the other instance no reason was given though in both cases the visitors from London appeared shocked and angry.
The Giftland Mall was one of those places that appeared to have been much visited by our Jubilee Anniversary guests and the open streets and municipal markets were well-populated. It seemed that it had occurred to our visitors that their presence here had coincided with the seasonal glut of a variety of fresh fruit. In the case of the markets it was not as easy to determine whether their visits there were simply nostalgic excursions or whether some of them might have been seized with the urge to press their relatives and friends into cooking up a good old Guyanese storm.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the local jewellers reported, without going into details, that jewellery had continued to sell well up to yesterday and perhaps the best news of all came from a Florida-based businesswoman who has announced that she will be undertaking a major hotel investment project in Linden. The mining community can do with investments of that kind.
On the whole visitors who went to our resorts spoke well of their experiences save and except in one case where a misunderstanding with the proprietors came close to leaving a pair of visitors stranded. It seems as though logistics can be a major problem is getting to and from remote visitor destinations. Things like these discourage visitors.
If there were occurrences that might have temporarily soured the mood of some of our visitors, there was, as far as we are aware, nothing that placed a permanent damper on their visit. From our perspective, however, the Jubilee event would have provided some valuable insights—albeit limited ones—into just what it would take to create a sustainable tourist industry which is part of what both the government and the private sector say is desirable to take the economy forward. Perhaps, therefore, before we put the experience behind us and move on to the next pursuit, the two might wish to sit down together in an effort to try to determine the lessons that are to be learnt from the events of the past two weeks or so.
