‘Visit Rupununi’ is a non-profit Regional Destination Marketing and Management Organization (RDMMO) comprising private, public and community-based entities in Region Nine. Established in 2015 with the support from Conservational International-Guyana (CI) in response to a recommendation made by the various stakeholders, its designated mission is to coordinate community-based nature tourism initiatives. Its key mandate is the energetic marketing of the various services provided by its members, providing training and capacity building, and aggressively representing the Rupununi as a whole.
Head of Visit Rupununi and owner of Region Nine’s Karanambu Lodge, Melanie McTurk, says that the Region which, through its tourism potential, has so much to offer Guyana as a whole, has been hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. While it is in the nature of the marketing of goods that products can be bought and sold ‘online,’ in the instance of tourism, McTurk says, it was the fact that the pandemic did not allow for consumers to access the product that impacted the earnings of the sector.