THE complaint that Guyanese are hardly able to enjoy the local tourism industry due to exorbitant costs has been floating around for a while, and being cognizant of it, the Mainstay Lake and Resort in Essequibo has in mind making things a bit more affordable in 2022 with the roll-out of new and improved initiatives at the facility.

Work is already in the pipeline to install a huge water park that will feature a bouncy castle and other fascinating attractions to make the experience at the Amerindian reservation even more enjoyable and worthwhile.
Not everyone, though, may be able to rent a cabin for an overnight stay, so in a bid to make the facility accessible to more people, the resort will now be offering camping tents which would see Guyanese and other visitors enjoying the same quality, fun-filled vacation at a cheaper cost.

What this means is that the resort will provide visitors with the tent and will allow persons to walk with all of the necessary things to make their stay comfortable. Details on just what items will be required will soon become available on the resort’s online platforms.

“We recently imported some camping tents from the USA. It’s going to be more outdoor activity and people will love it. You can camp out and cook your own food,” Marketing Manager Roy Moore has said.

“For example, if you have a big family of 20 persons and you cannot afford the cabins, you can come camp out and walk with your own setup and so forth and have a very cheap vacation. You’ll have access to the lake; you’ll be treated as one of our guests; you will have access to the gym, restaurant, and so forth,” Moore added.

The tents will be available in various sizes to suit visitors’ needs and will be fully available early in 2022.

Commenting on the water park, Moore said: “It’s very costly to bring in, but hopefully sometime during the year we will be able to have it. It’s going to be a huge attraction. So when we get that and if the road to the resort is fixed, Mainstay will be unstoppable.”

The directors have been trying to get the authorities to look into repairing the road leading to the resort from Anna Regina, on the Essequibo Coast, but related that this is yet to be done. “If the road is repaired, people can easily drive in and have dinner and go back out, but it’s a disaster to come in now. We’ve had lots of promises. The last administration promised us, and we’ve spoken to many ministers in the current administration. Their intervention is absolutely critical if we’re going to have longevity here,” Moore expressed.

Because Mainstay Resort is government-owned with about five investors, Moore noted that having the roads repaired would also serve the government’s interests. “Tourism is a money-making business, so if they do the roads, it helps tourism, which in turn, will build the economy. It’s a win-win all around.”

A Good Year
Mainstay Resort was badly affected in 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic started making waves here, and even had to close operations for a whopping eight months. So when they decided to reopen in November 2020, it was with the idea that things would be slow. But the opposite was the reality.

“We had this transformation in January [2021]…Prior to the pandemic, we were struggling, but we’ve had a very good year,” Moore offered.

Meanwhile, Marketing Representative Wazeefa Barakat is one of the employees who lost her job at the resort due to the pandemic. “We’ve been closed for eight months and everyone was out of a job. It was horrible, but we still got cash relief from our boss, which was helpful. I was very excited to come back to work because life was very boring,” she expressed.

Barakat shared that much renovation work has been done on the deck bar which is much bigger now; the benabs and cabins have been upgraded with the latter now featuring brand new televisions and refrigerators. “This is the destination you have to come to if you just want to get away and relax. We’re going to be upgrading the cabins even further to make them more modernised,” she said.