Tourism authority cries poverty
Needs proper offices, $85M in funding
Stabroek News
January 19, 2003
Brian James, Chairman of the Guyana Tourism Authority, is likening the fledgling board's financial position to Old Mother Hubbard opening her cupboard and finding it bare.
He says the immediate work of recruiting administrative and research staff is stalled for want of funds and he now wonders whether having such an authority is worthwhile.
Asked about the board's work plan for the year, James told Stabroek News that "essentially we have no money to execute our work plan now. We do not know where we are going to get the money required to carry out a plan, how much money we are going to get and when we are going to get it."
The newly-established GTA has designed a budget which requires some $85M. But James said that setting up the office and getting it running would cost over $80M and "we are talking in a time frame in which the national budget has not yet been addressed, and the indications are not good."
And at a meeting with the Ministry of Tourism, Industry and Commerce and the Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana (THAG), James said that the minister indicated to the board that it should expect less funding than it did last year. Last year's budget was $20M. Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce Manzoor Nadir when asked about the GTA's budget told Stabroek News he was aware of the GTA's needs but a large slice of the national budget would go to domestic safety and security. He could not say how much the board is to get.
Last year's $20M was budgeted to aid the authority in its establishment. The authority came into being in late August following the passage of the legislation. James said that only $9M was used due to the fact that the authority did not get the money on time and there was "some confusion as to how it should be spent. The board was informed that because of categorisation the funds could not be spent for capital purchases." The sums spent were on securing advertisements and public awareness materials.
Now the board has no money and its immediate priority is to employ an administrator and hire various categories of staff to conduct research. "If $80M is pie in the sky, somebody has to tell me what I could commit to before I could come up with a sensible operational budget and a work plan."
James said the board is functioning on a purely voluntary basis. It has the services of a part-time tour operator Nadia Jabour, who is functioning as the administrator. Apart from that, James said he has asked other board members for volunteer help to deal with the tasks but maybe, because of other commitments he has not got the kind of response he had been looking for, that is, with the exception of the board's vice chairman, Annette Arjoon.
One member of the board, he said, was now employed by the ministry as a consultant. The Ministry, he said, thinks that the consultant could play a pivotal role in the establishment of the board but James feels that while he may assist he was not the answer to a fully-fledged administrator who will respond to the board's needs on a 24-hour, seven-day week basis.
Officially, he said the board is sharing the premises of the GUYEXPO offices at the Sophia Exhibition Site. The GTA has been given two rooms, which James feels would be inadequate for the functions of the board which is a regulatory body. Usually tourism authorities are high profile places where visitors, the public, the media and various other people can visit, he noted.
He said the board has discussed the issue of accommodation with the minister but Nadir advised first setting up their offices and maybe more space would be provided. James said what the board can achieve at this time would be proportional to the financial input. Over three years ago funding through a European Union grant had been identified for the rehabilitation of the Chess Hall on Main street, but the building collapsed last year and the funds were diverted to another area.
James said that in the work plan was Guyana's participation in the ITB (a tourism trade fair) in Berlin, Germany in March to be followed by a similar activity in Chicago.
While it was initially planned that a team should be present at the Berlin fair, James said after Thursday's meeting, the authority had been informed that based on a Cabinet decision funding would be provided for only one person to travel. He saw it difficult for one person to man the Guyana booth for four days and make presentations as well.
Due to the lack of funding, James said that he had been informed that Guyana would not be able to send a local team to the Chicago fair. Sending a one-man delegation to Berlin, which has the potential to showcase Guyana's unique tourism product, and not being represented at the Chicago fair, he saw as counter-productive.
Asked about external sources of funding instead of only relying on central government funding, James said that research has to be done in this area, but doing that would require personnel and resources to hire the personnel.
Coming from the private sector he feels it is incomprehensible for the government to ask for a work plan and then the board has to get permission to carry out its functions. "Maybe we don't need a tourism authority," he said, adding that decision-making is supposed to be one of the functions of the board.
Its role includes registering, licensing and setting standards for the tourism and hospitality sectors and advising the minister on the way the government should go in relation to tourism. The reality now, he said, was that the government is directing the way in which tourism should go.
To get a better idea of the functioning of other tourism authorities and so as not to reinvent the wheel, James said that he had suggested to the ministry that the board make visits to other such bodies in the region.
According to the ministry's work plan for the year, Nadir told Stabroek News that there will be shared responsibility between the GTA and the ministry this year, while the GTA was still setting up its offices.
Referring to opportunities that are available which could be tapped into, he said an English producer researching various destinations for a documentary is keen on looking at Guyana.
The producer has offered to produce a 35,000 pounds sterling package including broadcast time in five different languages. If Guyana were to do this on its own, he said, it would cost about four or five times that amount.
While he would like to latch on to such a project, James said it would have to get the board's approval, and maybe the ministry and Cabinet's. There are opportunities, he said, but the authority will need a level of independence including the resources.
He said tourists are now looking at all-inclusive tour packages and in the aftermath of September 11 and the worldwide caution, Guyana has suffered more because of negative travel advisories. He said it was a very high hurdle for Guyana to jump in product development and marketing - even among Guyanese.
James stressed that security and domestic peace were essential to any sector functioning properly.
He noted that while visitor arrivals may have been up last year, visitors attending meetings with the CARICOM Secretariat made up a large percentage of the increase.
