The Guyana Consulate in Toronto, Canada has begun the distribution of the magazine `My Guyana El Dorado' highlighting Guyana's tourism/eco-tourism products in the USA and Canada in an effort to promote Guyana as a travel destination.

Representative of the Toronto Consulate, Nancy Rickford told invitees including Tourism Minister Manzoor Nadir at a reception held at the Grande Coastal Inn on Monday evening in honour of 12 travel agents from Canada that the consulate has just finished printing "another 100,000" of the magazines. The travel agents were on a four-day familiarisation tour to view Guyana's eco-tourism product.

Already, Rickford said, 50,000 of the magazines are in circulation in Canada and 45,000 are currently being distributed in the United States.

There were a few slowly trickling down to Guyana, she said, noting that the bulk was being shipped here by boat. This means, she said, that persons involved in the tourism industry here would have to part their part to make things easy for the visitors who come to the country.

BWIA Toronto Representative, Margo Harris, in brief remarks noted that the Canadian travel executives? educational tour was made possible through Guyana?s Consul General in Toronto, Danny Doobay and the Ministry of Tourism, Industry and Commerce.

BWIA, in association with the consulate, she said, was now working towards bringing to Guyana a group of media operatives next year April and another group of travel agents in November.

She noted that the response to the invitation to travel to Guyana in Canada was "so good" that they could not accommodate everyone. They had to ask them to hold on until another occasion. The travel agencies, she noted, were dominated by women but the tour to Guyana was quite the reverse with ten men and just two women which she said was an indication of the interest generated.

The travel executives were mainly from Ontario with one from British Columbia and another from Edmonton, Alberta. Represented were Amstar Travel and Tours, Adventures Abroad Worldwide, Josita Travel services, Southwind Travel and Tours, K. Walsh Associates Travel, Look Travel Ltd, Sunray Travel, A. Nash Travel, Multiculture Travel, Roraima Travel service, Area Travel group and Pekao Trading Company.

Harris said that she would suggest to the BWIA Miami and BWIA New York offices the idea of encouraging travel agents and journalists in their locations to visit Guyana as a travel destination.

She noted that she had visited Guyana 20 years ago but was confined to Georgetown. The visits to Kaieteur, Shanklands, Timberhead among other places, she said, were awesome but humbling experiences.

Among those sharing their experiences were Jamaican-born Carlos Wee Tong from the Area Travel Group in Toronto and Guyanese-born Dalchand Bissoon. (Miranda La Rose)