The Government must work with tourism investors
Peeping Tom
Kaieteur News
February 25, 2007
The slight decline in overall tourist arrivals for 2006 while being officially attributed to anxieties over the elections period should nonetheless be a source of great concern to the new Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, the Hon. Manniram Prashad.
Mannie, as he is popularly known is yet to really make a big impact on his ministry, and we are yet to see any major policy initiatives coming out of his ministry that would boost tourism in the country. There are the usual plans about building capacity with the tourism ministry but whether these arrangements will mean an increase in tourist arrivals is yet to be determined.
What the new minister must understand is that the success of his ministry is not going to be about Guyana simply hosting events; rather he must find an objective measure as to how well his ministry is doing.
That objective measure has to be tourist arrival numbers. And the principal task of the ministry should be to determine how best it can boost those numbers.
The Peeper was extremely disappointed to learn that last year, tourist arrivals actually declined. It was to be expected that there would have been a significant falloff during the peak summer period since Guyana's elections were slated for this period and since there were concerns about the possibility of violence again, it was to be expected that there would have been a decline in tourist arrivals in the month preceding and the month following the elections.
The elections however were trouble-free and since then there has been an appreciable improvement in the crime situation countrywide. One therefore expected that Christmas 2006 would have brought a bonanza of tourist arrivals. The information so far however does not indicate whether tourist arrivals for 2006 compared with 2005 and therefore one can only speculate that Christmas 2006 tourist arrivals were either on the same level as the previous year or they were marginally less.
This may have been anticipated, since this year Cricket World Cup will be hosted in the region, and some of those who may have been inclined to come home for the holidays would wish to be home for cricket, and therefore would have put off their plans to be home for Christmas.
Nonetheless, the Peeper is of the opinion, and this has been virtually confirmed from the limited information available, that Christmas has its own target market, a market that is not likely to expand significantly in the years ahead. It would therefore seem as if Guyana has to aim for a growth in tourist arrivals of about 5% each year, peaking at about 150,000; it is not likely even with events such as Cricket World Cup 2007 that our numbers will grow beyond that limit, at least not within the next four years.
What this means is that the minister now has to pay close attention to the numbers. I was hoping that at the opening of the Buddy's International Hotel, he would have done; instead he came off as being a faint echo of the President.
What the numbers would tell him is that we really do not need to be investing heavily in the Guyana Tourism Authority or in building capacity with his ministry because it is most likely that average arrivals will be capped at 150,000 tourists per year. We should also be careful about the number of new hotels that are being encouraged since growth in excess of 5% per annum is not likely over the next five years in the tourism sector and there is already excess spare capacity.
What the numbers also reveal, quite interestingly, is that 25% of total tourist arrivals come from within the region. This is quite a revelation and perhaps it is to this Caribbean market that we need to be looking more closely especially in terms of encouraging airfares that are affordable.
One of the disincentives of traveling to Guyana is the limited amount of package tours that are available. This in part can be explained by the preponderance of family-type tourism from the Diaspora. However, given the competition of the many tourist destinations and the deals that tourists are obtaining in places such as Santo Domingo and Cuba , Guyana needs to seriously ensure that the carriers that run our leg offer competitive fares. The fares offered for travel to Guyana from North America is to put it mildly too prohibitive.
What keeps our numbers up is the connection that people in the Diaspora have to this country. Airfares are so high that foreigners with no ties will simply not want to pay those fares when for less they can travel to Europe .
The minister must understand also that it is because of the government telling local investors that tourism is an emerging sector that a great deal of capital is being invested in the local hospitality sector. These investments will not materialise unless we can sustain at the minimum a 5% increase in tourist arrivals over the next five years.
Cricket World Cup 2007 may do something for that cause but it is now becoming clear that if tourism is going to be a major player in the country's economy, the government will have to work with airlines, tour operators and hoteliers in sustaining the level of arrivals from North America and the Caribbean .
Eco-tourism is predominantly low-volume, high-cost and is therefore not likely to pull large numbers of tourists.
This means that increased attention will now have to be paid to cruise ship and overland tourism and this means more attention to Brazil and Venezuela as well as to weekend tourist arrivals from the Caribbean .
More importantly, it means that the tourism ministry has to readjust its plans and seek to encourage the type of tourism that utilises the services in which so much has been invested over the past year.