For all the ‘notable achievements’ of the country’s tourism industry recorded in 2021 as outlined by the Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) in its yearend review, there can still be no disputing the fact that insofar as the national ambition of developing the key sectors of the country’s economy is concerned, the ‘tourism industry’ occupies a less than prominent position on the ‘food chain’.
Barbados and Jamaica are among the best examples in the region of countries where much of the national socio- cultural mindset is built around tourism. There are two dimensions to that mindset. The first is the economic one that has to do with a profound and widespread understanding that tourism is in effect a ‘commodity’, insofar as it is an economic resource; it is a significant employer of labour and a major money-earner. Secondly, and arising out of the role that tourism plays in the lives and livelihoods of the national population, there derives a certain ‘mindset’ that has to do with being a tourism-oriented country. The mindset embodies, primarily, the creation of a convivial/visitor friendly environment that embodies, among other things, particular environmental considerations. These have mostly to do with the physical state of the national environment as these pertain to issues like the condition of buildings, particularly those that are associated with the tourist industry, the state of repair of the roadways and the national garbage-collection regime. Countries that set a great deal of store by the value of their tourism, pay keen attention to these requisites. Guyana, manifestly, does not. The physical state of Georgetown in most if not all of the aforementioned respects, attests to both an official as well as a much broader national indifference to the impression that these give to visitors.
Truth be told, the treatment of Georgetown, the country’s capital and the refusal of the tourism-related institutions to weigh-in robustly on the issue of the role of the capital as the creator of a ‘first impression’ for visitors is probably its biggest failing.
Interestingly, the GTA’s 2021 end-of-year assignment cites three yardsticks in determining what it describes as its major achievements for the year that has just ended. First, it cites “visitor arrival statistics,” which realistically, has always been a somewhat questionable barometer for making tourism-related assessments. Further – and particularly in the context of what, these days, are business-related interests, increasing numbers of visitors arrive in Guyana which in effect means that the deployment of ‘visitor arrivals’ in the computation of tourist arrivals is, to say the least, misleading.
While the Guyana Tourism Authority may well be doing its best to blow the country’s tourism ‘trumpet’, there is, sadly, little evidence the central government has, over many years, and up until this time, done a great deal to advance the cause of tourism. During a recent visit to Region Nine the Stabroek Business secured an admittedly microcosmic but revealing picture of the state in which hinterland ‘tourism’ finds itself. At the various cattle ranches that we visited we found, among other things, a preoccupation with Covid-19 and the likelihood that the pandemic may well derail plans for the staging of the Rupununi Rodeo, the interior’s biggest one-off tourist attraction. Beyond that there exists concerns amongst some ranchers over the cross-border rustling of cattle, the absence of any kind of law enforcement deterrent and the impact of all this on the economy of the ranching sector.
Beyond that, our reportage in the recent issues of the Stabroek Business outlined the challenges being faced by the various sectors of the Region Nine economy, including retail trade, the hotel sector, the agricultural sector and the tourist sites, themselves, each of which, in turn, articulated their challenges. The overall concern, it seemed, was the need to establish more effective, more reliable links between the coast and the hinterland in order to reduce the costs of goods and services in those communities, to facilitate more regular and reliable travel by both land and air (the state of the Linden to Lethem road remains the biggest talking point in the Region Nine business community) and to provide more reliable telecommunication services to the Region.
Even as we periodically and glibly articulate the country’s tourism potential, we are inclined to overlook the role that accessible modern medical services play in attracting tourists particularly to popular but remote tourist sites. It is no secret that the available medical services in Region Nine are unlikely to inspire the highest level of visitor confidence and, more pointedly, that successive governments have not done anywhere near enough to enhance the quality of those services in the hinterland regions, as a whole.
While the local Tourism Authority has become locked into a pattern of periodically blowing the sector’s trumpet, none of this has ever been matched by commensurate official initiatives, including meaningful investment in a tourism infrastructure that matches the rhetoric.
Perhaps, more than anything else, unless the capital, the gateway to the country, undergoes a genuine makeover that takes account of improving our roads, public buildings and natural visitor attractions like municipal markets, shopping malls, vending locations et al and unless, furthermore, we find ways of ensuring that our streets and parapets are not mistaken as garbage dumps, we are on a hiding to nowhere.
