All of the popular hotels in Georgetown are booked solid for the upcoming Cricket Carnival period including the recently opened US$450-$750 a night Pegasus Suites and most of the government- partnered bed and breakfast pre-fabricated houses at Providence.
“This new part is opened but won’t be able to accommodate any bookings until after the cricket because we are booked out already,” Pegasus Suites owner Robert Badal told Stabroek News on Saturday.
Government, too, announced that hotel rooms in the capital are also booked and its bed and breakfast initiative which opened an additional 300 rooms was quickly being grabbed.
“By the time we announced the cricket, all the rooms at hotels were booked out so we launched the bed and breakfast programme and added 300 new rooms and most of those are taken up,” Minister of Tourism Oneidge Walrond informed last Wednesday.
President Ifraan Ali yesterday said that Walrond was meeting with those persons who would leave their homes for the two-week period under the Airbnb-type initiative.
“Minister of Tourism is busy talking to residents who are moving out of their homes for two weeks to rent those homes to the persons coming in and that is covered already,” he said.
“This is what infrastructure transformation brings. It brings an improvement in a net worth of the community it makes an improvement in the net worth of properties that it takes up their value. So what we’re doing is adding value, building capacity, bringing hope and developing pride,” he added.
Some 175 persons signed up with the Guyana Tourism Authority to be a part of the programme along with an initiative by government for turnkey home owners to use
Additionally, government had announced at this year’s Building Expo that 300 pre-fab houses were being built and would be used as a revenue earner for their owners
“We are looking at a very innovative model. We are looking at a way in which we can marry cricket with uplifting people out of poverty. So, we are setting aside land to build 300 prefabricated homes. The prefab homes will be used during cricket to host people as rentals and the revenue from that rental will go as down payment to the banks for the poorest persons,” Ali had said.
Ali said that housing and urban planning for this country has to be visionary while at the same time ensure that the poorest of persons are able to at least own a home.
It is why, he explained, that the homes being piloted in the “Cricket out of Poverty” initiative will only see about $15,000 to $20,000 as its monthly mortgage with 15 per cent of its overall costs coming from the Bed and Breakfast (B&B) programme to pay the banks as a down payment.
“The 10 per cent to 15 per cent they have to find for the bank will come from the revenue from the place. That will take up what they had to pay… The type of houses we are working out is about fifteen to twenty thousand dollars per month. That is the type of innovation we are talking about and we are having discussions about. These are the things that can really change the face of the country,” Ali posited.
Seventeen days of events are planned for the Cricket Carnival which begins here this Friday.
Some 14 companies have officially partnered as sponsors. They are Atlas Security, International Import and Supplies, TMK 2020, Creamery, Adamantium Holdings, Associated Brands Limited, Avinash Contracting and Scrap Metal Inc., Condor Construction Inc, ANSA McAl, Kares Engineering, AGM, Digicel, Demerara Distillers Limited and GTT.
