Against the backdrop of the sustained challenges associated with adequate international airline services between Guyana and the country’s key tourism markets in North America and Europe, the semi-autonomous agency, the Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) has listed among its 2019 priorities, the creation of a partnership with the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) and the Ministry of Public Infra-structure (MoPI) that targets agreements with two new airlines to serve the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA), Timehri by December this year and a total of four new airlines to serve the country’s main international airport by December next year.
The plan to significantly strengthen what currently is an international airline travel regime that is often fraught with challenges and frustrations, is one of the eye-catching undertakings listed in the GTA’s Tourism 2019 Marketing Management & Development outline seen by this newspaper.
Meanwhile, consistent with its goal of increasing tourism visitation to Guyana from key investment markets and between Guyana, Suriname and Brazil by December this year, the GTA says that it will be seeking to partner with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration to make more visas accessible, ease visa restrictions within key investment markets and enable more seamless travel across borders.
In an effort to popularise interior travel as a facet of tourism expansion, the GTA says that it will be partnering with the GCAA at another level to improve air connectivity between Georgetown and the interior and to implement a system for concessioning priority airstrips on a competitive basis in order to reduce travel costs. Beyond the pursuit of interior air travel initiatives aimed at shoring up the country’s tourism product, the GTA says it will be seeking to work with unnamed “key stakeholders” towards the goal of developing “a tourism brand and micro-site for the Essequibo region by developing a “formal tourism circuit” and formalising a collaborative approach to marketing, transportation offerings and product and infrastructure development.
Other high-priority objectives listed in the GTA’s menu of tourism-related initiatives include securing support from the Guyana Power and Light Company, the Department of Energy, the Department of the Environment and the Guyana Energy Agency, “to empower sustainable energy production and use through the tourism value chain and implement a related programme in a receptive indigenous community.” The GTA says it will be seeking to secure donor support and initiate this initiative by mid-year. Less-than-reliable supply has long been felt to be a critical factor inhibiting the roll out of a world-class tourism product in Guyana.
The adoption of new tourism-related standards is also high on the list of immediate-
term priorities of the GTA. In this regard the Authority says it will be seeking to secure the approval of Cabinet by the end of February and afterwards, to work with the Bureau of standards to identify additional standards and guidelines that should be adopted within the tourism sector by the end of March.
And in order to scale up service quality, training and resource efficiencies, the GTA says it will be partnering with the Canadian Executive Services Organization (CESO), the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) and donors to secure training curricula, implement a train-the-trainer model and train trainees. The Authority aims to train 26 trainers and 600 trainees by December and complete customer service/visitor welcome trainings for all front-line employees who work with tourists by the end of next year.
