Guyana, with its numerous dark and mysterious rivers, dense expanse of tropical rainforests and diverse native peoples, has been luring first world peoples to these shores for centuries. In the wake of Spain, Dutch, English and French colonizers found Guyana a most attractive place and recorded their amazement in the early chronicles of their personal experiences on these shores. Elizabethan gentlemen adventurers, Sir Lawrence Keymis and Walter Raleigh, were convinced of the existence of the fabled golden city of El Dorado in the Guyana hinterland and in so doing precipitated the first international gold rush of the Americas. The early lure has remained constant and Guyana, still mysterious as ever, can with little effort but great determination, continue to attract tourists, in large numbers.

Tourism is today’s big money spinner. It is, arguably, one of the most important, and much sought after, leisure commodities in the world today. Essentially, it represents the ultimate reward for, and status symbol of, successful professional achievement in life. Also important is the economic reality that tourism remains exceedingly sensitive to increases in personal income. The higher the income levels, the greater the inclination to travel. Further, unlike most other economic commodities, there are no substitutes for the tourism experience. This means that the demand for holidays will continue to grow with economic improvements in lifestyles and the fact that lifestyles are improving at a phenomenal rate is serious food for thought.

The Government of Guyana is therefore economically prudent to endorse tourism as a viable development strategy. The spin offs are critical and many and include employment opportunities, income generation, foreign exchange earning capacity and public revenue generation. The Economist Intelligence Unit indicated that in 1988 the tourism industry earned in excess of US$150 billion. Today, tourism is the world’s largest industry. What is more, the industry is still growing with ample space for the Guyana product.

To facilitate the development of the sector, the Government, in 1996, produced a Tourism Incentive Package, which provides a variety of incentives to entrepreneurs, local and foreign, interested in investing in the tourism/hospitality sector. As a consequence, there has been an appreciable increase in the development of traditional facilities as well as new eco-nature-based types of facilities. An important aspect of all of this is the emergence of a number of tourist resorts and tourism packages. Then in 1999, the OAS sponsored National Tourism Development and Management Plan was intended to set the stage for the great economic take off in the industry but a few years later the country became engulfed in a fratricidal political turmoil from which it is yet to merge.

To date there is no serious estimate of the true impact of political instability on the embryonic tourism industry. We do know however, that in the best of times tourism is a robust economic growth point susceptible to a multiplicity of variables. In the circumstance, more than sugar, rice, gold and bauxite, the tourism industry requires political stability and national security if it is to grow and prosper in Guyana. Adverse travel advisories are the abiding nightmare of the sector and as a consequence, the current climate has not been most beneficial to the industry.