– Indranauth Haralsingh
VISITOR arrivals keep climbing, and it is expected to continue showing this positive trend with major upcoming events lined up, attracting scores of visitors to ‘Destination Guyana’. Speaking last Friday, at the official launching of Guyana’s inaugural Food, Arts and Music Festival (FAM), in the boardroom of the Ministry of Housing on Brickdam, Georgetown, Director of the Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA), Indranauth Haralsingh, said FAM was a major tourism event, and as such, GTA was very pleased and excited to be a part of major and mega events such as the FAM Festival.
He said the tourism authority will be coordinating the tourism presence at this event, to ensure that a lot of tour operators are at this FAM Festival.
“We are also happy that the airlines are onboard to work with packaging, to ensure that more visitors come to Guyana, especially those from the Caribbean and from the diaspora,” he added.
Haralsingh disclosed that visitor arrivals keep climbing in Guyana, and “we are at 25 percent increase over similar period last year”.
He said this signature event, which would also be a calendar event, would help to increase visitor arrivals to Guyana, and help to promote more domestic tourism by encouraging others to travel.
“An event of this nature and magnitude is also adding to the popularity of Guyana as a hotspot, or as the pulse for events and entertainment across the Caribbean; so we are actually carving out a spot and a name for ourselves by hosting a variety of events, and this new event would help to crown it all,” he stated.
The GTA Director said the FAM Festival can attract a lot of persons with various talents, and help to showcase the country’s creativity and innovation, since Guyana is known for its food, craft, performing arts, and music.
“This is a signature event that we are very, very happy to support. We must remember that it is a national event, and we want to encourage everyone to come out and support this event,” Haralsingh iterated.
Similarly, Acting Minister of Tourism, Irfaan Ali, said all across the Caribbean, such events like the FAM Festival form the basis or the core of other countries’ tourism products, and are useful in terms of promoting their country, culture and tourism.
“We are going to build our tourism product around this event in the future. The FAM Festival is now going to be regarded as the core tourism event for us, and it comes at a time every year when we will be celebrating our Independence,” he disclosed.
Ali also said that some upcoming events include Bikers Fest, Jamzone, and a 50-mile mountain biking event in August.
He said personnel from the GTA are going to Trinidad early next month, where a meeting will be held with yachters to organise a ‘Sail Guyana’ activity.
“The aim of that is not to sail once to Guyana; (it) is to bring investors in to see how possible it is to set up a marina in Bartica, so that we can have a part of that business coming to Guyana,” he pointed out.
“Our interest in tourism is very aggressive at this moment,” the Acting Tourism Minister underscored.