Resort week in the works
The Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) and Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana (THAG) on Thursday morning officially launched Guyana Restaurant Week (GRW) and piqued interest, as they announced that they are currently working on a Resort Week to follow a similar format as the GRW.

GRW officially begins today and will run until December 2, featuring participants from 19 restaurants. GFW is a part of the Tourism Awareness Month activities, which is being celebrated throughout November.

This is the second GRW of 2018, with the last being held in June and the eighth overall GRW. GRW has usually been held twice per year, since it’s commencement in November 2014.

How it works is that the participating restaurants have their meals listed at a fixed price. Lunch at any of the restaurants is $2,000 and dinner is $5,000. It was launched as a means of making restaurant meals more affordable and accessible to the Guyanese public.
“Culinary tourism has become increasingly important in the tourism industry around the world, doesn’t matter what you’re coming to Guyana for, you’re going to want to enjoy the food,” expressed Brian Mullis, GTA Director.

“What I like about the model is that it has been successfully implemented around the world, it provides an incentive to locals and visitors alike to explore new different kinds of foods, new and different restaurants that they might not have gone to otherwise. It also pushes restaurants to be innovative and creative with their menus because they have to hit a certain price point.”

THAG committee member Kevin Daby, expects this GRW to be even bigger and better and is banking on the buzz around to turnover real numbers when the event begins.
“There’s going to be a lot of excitement buzzing for this season by pure nature of the number of people participating, and the creativity that’s coming from a lot of the restaurants. We are going to be pushing it as heavily as possible at the airport, our social media, newspapers, videos,” Daby said.

He noted that the restaurants have really been going all out as they up the ante for the week.

“I recommend all the diners out there, don’t just try one, try them all. They’ve really pushed the limit, they’re getting very creative with their items.“

THAG President, Mitra Ramkumar says it’s going to be about more than just the food.
“When you come to dine it’s an experience, it’s about more than the food. Each restaurant, the ambience, the experience will be different, you have different menus,” he noted.
Noting the success of GRW, they said it has really encouraged the tourism organisations to see just how far they can take it, so they want to see if the same turnover would exist if a similar situation were put in place with the resorts.

“What GRW highlighted to us is that if you have the flow you are able to operate at prices that are affordable and accessible to the Guyanese public, so the major hurdle for us is the numbers and once we get the numbers then the prices come down immediately. So we want to do that for the resort week as well,” Ramkumar explained.

While all the logistics are still to be worked out, the organisers assured that come sometime early 2019. They’re hoping to do it sometime around one of the national holidays.

“We already have two resorts that have already opted in, so we’re just in the process of ensuring that we have enough variety. It would be over the holiday season so that we’re taking advantage of a bit of down season in tourism to open up the opportunity to local folks. It would pattern off of GRW in that it will have a fixed price,” Mullis said.