A joint effort that may yet be a most significant initiative by the Guianas to kick-start a tourism undertaking that will collectively benefit the three countries, Guyana, Suriname and French Guyana, got underway in Georgetown yesterday. Delegations from the three countries met at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre in Georgetown to fine-tune planning for the February 6th – 9th 2020 Tourism Expo of the Guianas event scheduled to be held here.
While Stabroek Business was unable to secure any details of the outcomes of the discourses amongst the delegations from the three countries, we learnt that yesterday’s meeting was expected to be followed by the official media launch of the Tourism Expo of the Guianas at the Marriott Hotel here in Georgetown. The launch, according to a Ministry of Business media release was expected to afford representatives of the tourism sectors in the three Guianas to make public arrangements for participation by the respective countries in the February next year event.
Next February’s event, which the official media release says is expected to attract visitors from “across a spectrum of tourism and cultural activities,” and which seeks to boost travel to and within the Guianas will, not for the first time, test the mettle of the tourism authorities in the three countries insofar as creating linkages that will enable visitors to benefit from seamless travel across the Guianas.
Beyond providing a sampling of what visitors to each of the three countries are likely to see and experience during the tourism experience involving the three countries, the planners, comprising several of their leading industry officials will be challenged to map out and make public arrangements for a seamless visitor experience that will involve travel arrangements, accommodation, the coordination of events/experiences in each country and communication arrangements to take account of language barriers. The organisers will, one expects, be pinning their hopes on attracting a market that will be seeking to take advantage of the three-in-one experience that is expected to derive from being able to visit all three of the Guianas as a single experience.
For Guyana, this will be yet another opportunity for the country’s tourism sector to raise its own visitor arrival numbers beyond the modest amounts that have been experienced over the years. Presumably, being part of a visitor experience that embraces the three countries will place on the shoulders of the local tourism industry the responsibility of moving to improve facilities like travel and accommodation as well as the upgrading of interior resorts. The Ministry of Business release states that the Guyana delegation on the Committee set up to ‘put together’ what is being seen as a novel visitor experience for this part of the world includes Donald Sinclair, Director General in the Department of Tourism in the Ministry of Business, Carla Chandra, Deputy Director of the Guyana Tourism Authority, Andrea de Caires, Vice Chair of the Board of the Guyana Tourism Authority and former Minister of Business Dominic Gaskin who will serve as Business Adviser.
The Suriname team is being led by Rachel Koningsbloem-Pinas, Chief Tourism Policy Adviser to the Minister in the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Tourism and includes Royce Jie Foeng Sang, Proprietor of the country’s Caribo Resort. The delegation from French Guiana is being led by Alex Madeleine, President of the Local Authority of French Guiana and includes Anne Amathieu, Consular representative of French Guiana in Suriname.
