Tourism aspirations and a hospitality institute

News that Guyana has invited the Director of the Hospitality Institute of Barbados to give support to the creation of a similar facility here in Guyana is welcome, even if it leaves us none the wiser as to a time frame for the creation of our own local centre of excellence as far as raising the bar in the hospitality sector is concerned.

To deal with the invitation to the Barbadian official first, it has to be said that we could hardly have made a better choice. The fact that Barbados has, for many years, enjoyed pride of place amongst the world’s top service deliverers in the tourism and hospitality sector has much to do with its service standards and by extension with the quality of service being offered by its hospitality institute.

Guyana, on the other hand, has been seeking to create a tourism sector in fits and starts and it would not be unfair to say that the critical hospitality dimension to that sector remains virtually non-existent. It shows in that there is still a considerable gap between our all-round service standards in treating with visitors to the country, which deficiency remains most evident in our hotels and our places of entertainment. On the whole, hospitality has everything to do with how we present our country through ourselves and as far as virtues like warmth, cordiality and politeness are concerned our workers in the sector are still some way from the top.

The other issue, of course, has to do with the dithering and dilatoriness that has characterized official promises to address the issue of service standards in the hospitality sector. The plain truth, based on the available evidence, has been that while we have proven adept at talking the talk we have not been anywhere near as proficient in walking the walk, particularly as far as actually investing in raising standards in the sector is concerned.

It should be recalled that the Director of the Barbados Hospitality Institute completed a feasibility study pertaining to a promise made by the Government of Guyana to establish a Hospitality Institute here. That was more than a year ago and no one in their right mind would be prepared to take a hefty bet on that project getting off the ground before at least another year, perhaps much more, goes by.

From what we are told in another section of the media Guyana is still to do some unspecified “additional work” on the local hospitality institute though, as has become customary, we are yet to be advised on the nature of those works and just how long it will be before they are completed.

We need hardly be told that national aspirations towards a world-class tourism product are that and no more in the absence of infrastructure that support those aspirations that must, of necessity, include an institution for training current and aspiring workers in the sector to the highest possible standards. Here, the uncertainty about our seriousness derives from the tendency for disclosures like the creation of a hospitality institute to emerge in a blaze of light seemingly out of nowhere and then to be extinguished as thoroughly as though it had never existed in the first place. But then we are reminded that the tourism portfolio now benefits from a new minister, a separate ministry and, hopefully a more robust commitment to the sector than has been either evidenced or actualized previously.