If you have been carefully following the rollout over the years of the repetitive official undertakings to better position the country’s “tourism product” to contribute more meaningfully to the country’s economy and as well the promises to deploy the beauty of the country, our hinterland particularly, to attract favourable international attention, you are probably likely to agree that those promises have more or less fallen flat on their faces. The evidence, frankly, stares us unblinkingly in our faces.
There is, of course, the time-worn argument about a scarcity of material resources with which to invest in tourism though, frankly, the greater proof of official indifference reposes in the fact that there exists no real evidence of even an incremental effort to build a meaningful tourism sector over time. Frankly, the various noises over the years about our ‘tourism potential’ and one ‘plan’ after another to transform that potential into some kind of meaningful reality has, in retrospect, amounted to no more than a great deal of ‘huff and puff,’ the reality being that we have simply not been prepared to back with resolute effort those promises with meaningful action to properly ‘sell’ Guyana to a potentially lucrative international market.
The announcement in January last year of the recruitment of Mr. Brian Mullis, a sustainable tourism specialist, as Director of the Guyana Tourism Authority may have sent an encouraging signal since, while he is not a Guyanese, Mr. Mullis appears to have an insightful and hands-on understanding of key aspects of global tourism, particularly sustainable tourism. This has not been the case with his predecessors though one hastens to add that his appointment does not, by any stretch of the imagination, necessarily mean that government may be approaching (rather than, as yet, turning) the proverbial corner insofar as rolling out a serious strategy for tourism development is concerned. The reality is that Mr. Mullis’ appointment is not likely to change much except the perspective of himself and his team is backed on government’s side by a genuine desire to institute the policies and allocate the resources to facilitate their work. Contextually, one must bear in mind that Guyana, unlike some other CARICOM member countries, Barbados and Jamaica being among the prime examples, has not ever demonstrated any real preparedness to press its tourism potential into service as a possible serious money-earner through investment in infrastructure and marketing. We can do no more than hope that that posture does not continue to persist, going forward.
For all the effort of the supporting NGO’s in the sector -like the Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana (THAG), for example – to sustain some measure of profile and momentum in the sector, corresponding official efforts, over time, have not properly complemented those of the NGO’s or the various investors in the sectors, for that matter. Frankly, the sum total of the collective effort to promote Guyana’s tourist industry as a saleable product has not even been sufficient to cause meaningful numbers of Guyanese to see the hinterland and its attractions as a meaningful vacation option in preference to North America or Europe, far less to attract meaningful numbers of visitors from abroad.
The experts would of course have their own reasons why a country that is well-positioned to do so has not been able to meaningfully tap into the global tourism market though the patent evidence of a national failure to create even a reasonable physical environment in which a tourism industry can grow and prosper is sufficient to make the argument of even a casual observer. Frankly, the fundamental deficiency of our patent inability even to maintain a clean and convivial capital offers more than sufficient evidence of what might well be interpreted as a shocking indifference to how we are perceived by visitors to the country. Beyond that, we are still to demonstrate a capacity to create and properly maintain a coastal infrastructure, not least a road network and reliable electricity supply, both requisites for boosting the country’s profile as a place to visit.
Some of these shortcomings, one might add, have been, to a greater extent, a function of a lack of will, one of the better examples of this being our seeming inability to consistently manage the basic requisite of ensuring the reasonable cleanliness of the city and its environs.
From our particular vantage point of not being recognized globally as part of that Caribbean island chain widely viewed as a ‘tourist paradise,’ Guyana has traditionally found itself minimally sought after as a tourism destination by that particular segment of the market. That, historically, has rendered it necessary for us to work twice as hard to sell ourselves as a tourist destination in the region. More recently, however, the emergence of alternative markets to the sun, sand and sea options has presented new opportunities for Guyana. Up until now we have underperformed in terms of moving to seize those opportunities.
What appears to be the prevailing wisdom in some quarters to the effect that the likely global popularization of Guyana resulting from ‘the oil and gas factor’ will generate a heightened external curiosity about the country and therefore trigger a greater preparedness on the part of government to invest in both the strengthening of the tourism infrastructure and the international marketing of the product are not considerations that can be taken for granted. Oil and gas may prove to be a much more compelling distraction than we think at this time. For a start, the possible economic ‘giddiness’ that might result from the oil and gas factor may create an altogether different official mindset, shifting priorities in entirely different directions; so that what might currently obtain in terms of seeing the emergence of a tourism sector as a national asset could recede into the background as circumstances change.
The fact of the matter is that the presence of a Ministry with a portfolio responsibility for Tourism (but historically without any real clout in terms of attracting resources to the portfolio) and of weak supporting state agencies with strictly limited executive authority have meant that the sector has lacked any real clout and that it has failed to provide anything even remotely resembling an assurance of official long-term seriousness about tourism. The trappings of a physical structure have never really been attended by clear corresponding policies that unfold coherently and in a manner that generates confidence that insofar as the creation of a viable tourism sector is concerned we are headed somewhere.
Sustainable tourism offers real possibilities for the positive global promotion of Guyana in a manner that goes beyond visitors simply coming and going. There is, as well, its potential for enhancing our global reputation as a country seized of an awareness of the particular importance of the virtues of environmental sustainability, a template, if you will. Those considerations alone could generate a significantly enhanced international curiousness about Guyana that could ultimately metamorphose into a significant increase in visitor arrival numbers over time.
Promoting what we in Guyana loosely call tourism is, in large measure, about much more than boosting visitor arrivals. It is about preparing the country for a possible role as an incubator for the creation of an enhanced universal understanding of the importance of environmental sustainability. If we begin to treat that as our real mission, perhaps it may yet result in a fundamental shift in what tourism could really represent for Guyana. Arguably, we are beginning to see something of a shift in conceptual official thinking here though the attendant corresponding policy shifts are probably likely to be slower in coming.