Burnishing the Guyana tourism product
Guyana Chronicle
May 6, 2002
THAT Guyana has a wonderful tourism product is one great assertion accepted by various sections of the populace as well as by the scores of foreigners, who travel yearly to these shores to conduct business. What is questionable, however, is the capacity of those who administer the various areas of the country to make optimum use of the natural and cultivated aspects of their regions, as well as the plethora of cottage and other small industries that can be developed to further augment the overall tourism product.
The years of the 1990s witnessed the blossoming of a number of picturesque resorts along some of the country’s wonderful rivers and other waterways. Entrepreneurs with great vision invested huge sums of money in transforming what appeared to be dense bushes and undergrowth into oases of tropical beauty enhanced by modern facilities and both local and international cuisine. Many of these resorts offer wild game hunting and fishing, nature trails, water sports and a range of other social activities. And in recent times, quite a few top-class hotels and inns have been opened along the coast offering visitors a level of luxury that is comparable to accommodation found in the tourist islands of the Caribbean. Those hotels, which were established in the City of Georgetown decades ago, spruced up their infrastructure and installed modern communication facilities, which catered directly to the needs of visiting businesspersons.
We must commend the Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana (THAG) for its work over the years in sensitising both the Government, the private sector bodies, and the populace in general, on the importance of putting systems and mechanisms in place in order to attract visitors to Guyana and, further, to entice them into returning to this country. In times past, various Government Ministries assisted in organising seminars for those persons in the hospitality industry. The personnel involved realised just how much the reputation of a tourist destination rested on the quality of customer service offered visitors in the first hours of their arrival in the country. One understands the enormity of the task in preparing for tourists, when one visits territories such as Barbados and Jamaica. These two islands in particular have thriving tourist industries (at least until September 11, 2001). And their present-day success is the product of three decades of burnishing their hospitality industries to improved levels. Jamaica and Barbados even established schools to train workers such as maids, waiters, hotel clerks, barmen and other important functionaries. The objective of such training is not to make the populace servile as was mistakenly thought in Guyana in the 1970s, but to deliver such a quality of service, that the tourist is induced to return for his next holiday, (bringing some friends if possible) and spend his United States dollars or British pounds in that particular territory.
Guyana, it was agreed, does not have white beaches and blue waters. But this land possesses some of the most fabulous flora and fauna found on the South American continent. It boasts spectacular waterways like the Essequibo River, the Kaieteur and Imbaimadai Falls and Lake Mainstay, whose waters assume a wine-like hue depending on the interplay of the sun and clouds. Guyana has an array of beautiful fruits and vegetables. For lovers of the environment, there is the rainforest, which comprises great tracts of land carpeted by the dense foliage of trees; there are rare turtles and eagles, a pride of jungle cats and several species of monkeys. Best of all, the descendants of Guyana’s pre-Columbian inhabitants are worthy subjects for anthropological research for thousands of them still maintain their traditional culture and are repositories of the medicinal value of myriad species of plant life found in the rainforest.