Progress towards marketing Destination Guyana tourism in T&T
GUYANA is looking to tap into the Trinidad market, as efforts continue to promote and sell ‘Destination Guyana’. In that quest, this country is set to launch a massive campaign out of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) shortly, Minister with the portfolio, Mr. Irfaan Ali announced last week Thursday.
He told the media, following a recent visit there, that:”We had a very good meeting and our main objective was to commence a process of promoting and marketing Destination Guyana to the people of T&T.”
Noting that the twin-island republic has the largest travelling population in the Caribbean, Ali acknowledged it is important that Guyanese break into it.
He said a destination marketing firm was engaged and it will be coming to Guyana to explain to local operators, what are the prospects in Trinidad and work on developing packages that can be advertised there to pull people here.
Ali met, last week, with representatives of Advantage Advertising, a Trinidad company, to discuss the start of the drive to expand Guyana’s tourism sector.
As a result, personnel from that company will be travelling to Guyana, later this month, to meet with tourism industry stakeholders and make a presentation on the potential of the Trinidad and Tobago market.

SIGNIFICANT OCCURRENCE
Ali said another significant occurrence in T&T was a meeting to showcase Guyana as a sailing destination and, for that, the Guyanese met with the Yachting Association.
“We had an overwhelming event and it was successful. We had great interest by yachters in sailing to Guyana,” he reported.
Out of those discussions, Ali said a conference with local resort operators, hotels, travel agents and other stakeholders will be convened to discuss how they are going to approach and target the Trinidad market, which has great potential for Guyana.
In addition, he said his team held a conversation with Trinidad’s Minister of Transport, Mr. Devant Maharaj and talked about establishing an in-transit lounge for Guyanese at Piarco International Airport.
“We have been, consistently, working on having passengers moving in and out of Guyana enjoying the ease of travel and one of the main issues is that of the in-transit where you have to come out and go back through the security,” Ali pointed out.
He said: “What they have advised us is that they are in the process of completing the infrastructure for an in-transit lounge in Trinidad and, in six weeks time, we should have tremendous improvement in that regard.”