Written By Jimmy Roos
DURING the last few decades, tourism has experienced unprecedented growth and diversification to become one of the world’s fastest growing economic sectors, and its largest service industry. According to Egan (2001), ecotourism is the fastest growing sector of the tourism industry, with an average annual growth rate of 20 to 30 percent. 

According to the GO-Invest website, visitors to Guyana have increased from 57,400 in 1999 to over 116,000 in 2005, while Tourism receipts (or exports) amounted to over US$35 million in 2005. Now this may sound like a lot, but it is actually not. Just to put it into perspective, in 2011, fellow South American countries Chile and Peru welcomed 3.1 million and 2.5 million visitors to their respective countries. In 2012, that number increased to 3.5 million and 2.8 million respectively.
Everyone agrees that Guyana has the potential to tap into this huge and expanding industry by drawing millions of new visitors to the country every year. This would considerably expand the country’s economic base and add billions to the state coffers.
Let’s learn from Costa Rica, which is not far from us and have become an ecotourism success story.

Costa Rica, An Ecotourism Success Story
While many Third World nations are focusing on rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, Costa Rica has turned to ecotourism as its key to economic development. The nation’s tourist industry brings in about 1 million visitors annually and generates approximately $1 billion a year, making it the country’s second largest source of income after silicon chip production.(Dulude,2000)
Costa Rica’s tourism industry has excelled so quickly for several reasons.

1. Location
The country’s proximity to the United States gives its tourist industry a clear advantage over the ecotourism adventures offered in Africa and Asia. The U.S. contributes nearly 49% of Costa Rica’s foreign visitors with another 9% traveling down from Canada and Mexico. Guyana is well placed, since Guyana is only four – five hours away from Miami and New York, and can thus take advantage of this relative proximity to draw an increasing number of tourists from North America.

2. Political Stability
Costa Rica has a long history of political and social stability. It does not even maintain a standing army. Guyana is relatively stable politically, except during the time of elections, when there is potential for violence as we have seen after the last elections. If we want to attract hundreds of thousands and even millions of tourists to the country, it is incumbent upon political leaders to promote tolerance and dialogue among their followers.

3. Strong Environmental Lobby
Costa Rica’s reputation among environmentalists is crucial to the successful promotion of their product, and this has incited the “green industry” to form an influential environmental lobby. Although the immediate costs of increased environmental regulations on travel services may initially injure profits, the long term benefits of maintaining an environmentally-friendly image have swayed the ecotourism industry to support most of the government’s conservation initiatives.(Kaimowitz, 1997, 26). Former President Jagdeo is seen as a champion for conservation and is highly regarded among the environmental lobby. This can be used to the country’s advantage.

4. International Support
Costa Rica’s ecotourism industry was supported both politically and financially by the IMF, World Bank, and the United States. For instance, the US Agency for International Development, which has long been active in promoting environmental protection and ecotourism in Costa Rica, trained park rangers and guides, funded conservation efforts, and set up the Agricultural School for the Humid Tropical Region, known as EARTH by its Spanish acronym (USAID, 1996). If Guyana can get the same kind of International support, it will boost its desire to become a world class ecotourism destination.

5. Infrastructure
Costa Rica created new National Parks and upgraded the facilities at existing parks. In addition, they built new hotels and resorts and upgraded the facilities at existing accommodations. On the other hand, Guyana’s current tourism facilities won’t be able to handle a vastly increased number of tourists, so the facilities will have to be upgraded and new facilities built. Currently, almost all existing facilities have to be accessed via air or water. Having more facilities that can be accessed over land will cut the reliance on air and boat transport. This will ensure that more people can access more facilities and will reduce the potential for accidents. However this means that the current road infrastructure has to be upgraded, and new roads built that will link the new facilities.

6. Transport
Another thing that worked in the favour of Costa Rica is that they had existing direct flights from major North American destinations to bring in the tourists. All they had to do was to develop and upgrade the infrastructure inside the country. So now tourists arrive in the country and seamlessly follow their itinerary between venues before they finally leave the country.
Guyana has much work to do in this regard as there are currently no direct air links between Guyana and North America or Europe. This has to change. Another thing that is currently poor and needs upgrading is the transport to take an increased number of tourists around the country to various tourism facilities.
Customer Service
There is a need for workers to be retrained to an international standard. Most service workers in the Guyanese hospitality sector are accustom speaking in a certain way, which may be understandable to Guyanese as well as regional visitors, but would not be understood by International visitors. For example, service workers here ask you what you will be “using” meaning, what will you be “eating” or “having” for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Vagrants & Litter
Tourists don’t want to see people lying around in the streets or beg them for money or food. Neither do they want to see streets and drains littered as is the case, currently, in Georgetown. So if we want the number of tourists coming to this country to increase, we have to first create places to move the homeless.
The next thing to do would be to clean up the cities, but that’s not all. Garbage bins should be placed throughout the city for citizens to place their garbage in.
Additionally, a comprehensive campaign should be implemented, which will be centred in homes, schools and offices, teaching all of Guyana not to litter.
The city council should also implement a robust campaign punishing those who litter with a fine or imprisonment. Citizens should be encouraged to report and take pictures of offenders. Windhoek, the capital of Namibia has been voted the cleanest city in Africa for a number of years now. It is therefore no coincidence that this country’s tourist numbers increase year on year. In 2012 it welcomed over 1.1 million new tourists, with visitor numbers for 2013 set to increase by at least a further 10%.
Crime
Tourists want to feel safe when they visit a country, hence the high incidence of crime or the perception of it, negatively impacts on tourism. Judging by recent newspaper reports on the increase of violent crime in Guyana and Georgetown in particular, there is a perception, even among Guyanese, that the crime situation is out of hand. This needs to be addressed and crime needs to be brought under control.

If we can learn lessons from Costa Rica and other countries that have successfully turned tourism into a major revenue earner, there is no reason why Guyana cannot begin welcoming at least a million new tourists to the country every year. It is all possible, but it will take work and will require Guyanese to change their ways.