`You only need to look at our almost empty hotels and resorts’
President of the Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana (THAG) Renata Chuck-A- Sang has told Stabroek Business that a point has been reached where the stakeholders in the country’s tourism sector need to face the realities of the weaknesses of the industry in Guyana if the necessary remedial measures are to be put in place.
“We need to understand, for example, that one of the realities of our tourism sector is that as long as we are unable to market it effectively we will not be able to attract meaningful numbers of visitors to Guyana,” Chuck-A-Sang said.
In an interview with Stabroek Business earlier this week Chuck-A-Sang said that her earlier public comment about the challenges facing the tourism sector was intended to draw attention to certain realities which the country cannot afford to ignore if the sector is to move forward.
“The fact is that not enough visitors are spending money and our hotels are virtually empty. Prior to Cricket World Cup we had a capacity of 800 rooms. The current capacity is around 2,700 rooms. This, in circumstances where the sector has not really grown, Chuck-A-Sang said.
The Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) has challenged Chuck-A- Sang’s assertion regarding a slump in the sector and the THAG President said that while she had no intention of engaging in a war of words with the GTA one only had to examine the occupancy rate for hotels in the city and its environs to determine the actual visitor arrival rate. “I believe that the occupancy rate is somewhere in the region of between 25 and 35 per cent, and this in a situation where our otels have an average of about 10 to 15 rooms. Generally, an occupancy rate of around 70 per cent is considered viable,” Chuck-A-Sang said.
And according to Chuck-A-Sang proprietors of some urban hotels are likely to face challenges arising out of low occupancy rates. “Frankly, I believe that investors in the sector really wanted to support government in terms of our involvement in Cricket World Cup and some may simply have gotten too caught up in the situation,” she added.
Meanwhile, the THAG President told Stabroek Business that the situation with regard to visitor arrivals at interior resorts is even worse. She named three resorts on the Essequibo River where she said occupancy currently stood at zero.
Meanwhile the THAG President told this newspaper that she felt that the GTA was both underequipped and underfunded to fulfill its mandate. She said that the GTA has been set up “on the recommendation of THAG” and that one of its principal purposes was to market Guyana’s tourism product. Chuck-A-Sang, who is a member of the Board of Directors of the GTA said that she believed that the current budget of the GTA was in the region of between $75m and $80m. “In 2005 the budget of the Tourism Authority in St Lucia was around $US80m,” Chuck-A-Sang told Stabroek Business.
And according to Chuck-A-Sang the GTA also faced a problem of scarce skills which, along with scarce financial resources made it impossible for the organization to market the Guyana tourism product effectively. “The irony is that that is part of the purpose for which the GTA was set up.” Chuck-A-Sang said.
The THAG President said that she believed that the local tourism sector had become bedevilled by a number of problems in recent months including rising fuel prices and consequential increases in travel costs, problems associated with the departure of airlines from the Guyana route and the downturn in the US economy which had affected migrant Guyanese who return home seasonally.
