THE Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) has embarked on a new action plan to develop and boost tourism in Guyana. This plan is said to be one that targets destination management.
Senior Officer of Product Development and Facilitation at GTA, Kamrul Baksh, told the Guyana Chronicle on Tuesday that they have contracted a company from Switzerland:

SwissContact—which will conduct a three-week project to do demand-based destination development and implement a strategic action plan that will be adopted here Guyana.
“Basically what this exercise will be looking at, is a destination management plan through a methodology called the ‘Strategic Visitor Flow’. This company we contracted (SwissContact), has developed this methodology from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, and has employed it here in destination Guyana, specifically in Georgetown and Rupununi,” Baksh said.

Explaining what this methodology entails, he said that the first step is the mapping process, where they identify various purposes of the influx of tourists, and which part of Guyana they travel for that particular purpose. After these purposes and areas would have been identified, they will have a better idea of where would be best to invest their limited resources.

He shared that the project thus far has only focused on Georgetown and Lethem but they will be expanding to different parts of Guyana.
“To come up with the data we have thus far, we did two workshops, one in Georgetown and one in Lethem. At the workshop, we invited stakeholders from both the private and public sectors to basically tell us where our visitors are coming from.

The business travelers for example, take particular routes, so we want to map exactly where they come to, how many of them come, and how long they are spending here. The end idea is to see where we can channel our resources to develop the flow that has the most potential,” Baksh explained.

He noted that they have also planned to have the strategy integrated across all ministries, where they will identify what the needs are for the particular flows, what the challenges are, what the potentials are, and from those they will develop a plan which will be cost-cutting and integrated.

“So if we say that there are infrastructural needs here, we work and collaborate with other agencies to ensure that there is an alignment of priorities and resources, so that we get the most out of our scarce resources that we have here,” he stated.
Also on Tuesday, GTA held a ‘Tourism Destinorama’, where the information that would have been plotted at the two workshops, was available for the public to view and make their input in validating the information.

“We want the entire public to come and validate the information we have on these maps. Tell us what we’ve missed; are there particular flows that we overlooked? Is there a particular group that goes to a particular place that we haven’t captured… and to include it in the map,” Baksh said.
After they would have gotten the feedback from the public, the GTA will then plot the information into an electronic destination management database which will be accessible to persons who may want to know where the best place to visit would be, for what particular purpose.

It also caters for locals who have an interest in traveling and visiting tourist sites in Guyana. They have so far identified 10 flows in Georgetown and 16 in Lethem, but are still in the process of analysing the information.
The GTA is also committed to ensuring that the contracted company carries out a training component for local facilitators so that GTA can be in a better position to roll out the programme in other parts of the country.