As Guyana’s interest in tourism appears to be gaining momentum, it is useful to reflect on the development of that sector in two Caribbean countries – St Vincent and the Cayman Islands – that moved into tourism at approximately the same time in the 1960s. Both British colonies, both relatively small (St Vincent 150 square miles; Cayman 105), and originally with less than vibrant economies, the two countries took different approaches to tourism development. In St Vincent, with some agricultural potential, the government opted for a smaller tourism plant (40-room limit on hotels) and for reliance on local investment so as to keep the industry largely Vincentian-owned. Cayman, with limited farmland and no rivers, chose the high-end, multi-storey approach (big hotels and condos) which by its very nature meant that foreign investment would play an essential role – Cayman was a poor country. The high-capacity brand-name hotels (Holiday Inn, Hyatt, Marriott, and eventually Ritz-Carlton) came to Cayman, part of the lure being no foreign exchange controls and freehold land, and drove the spectacular tourism surge that, along with offshore banking, made Cayman into the most affluent country per capita in the region. At the same time, however, from the very nature of that financial incursion, Cayman’s tourism plant today is largely foreign-owned or controlled, whereas that of St Vincent is largely Vincentian.
It would be interesting to ask people in these two countries today if on reflection they made the correct choice (Caymanians, in fact, are wrestling with the dominating percentage of American ownership of land and property in their country of 60,000 people), but the point is raised here peripherally in light of our own tourism stirrings where the name-brand tourism operations are being courted.
The more central observation, from a tourism standpoint, is the
