–Minister Walrond says tourism sector on full rebound from pandemic, defends budgetary allocation to promote tourism industry

OWING to critical investments, Guyana’s tourism industry has made a full recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce Oneidge Walrond said Thursday.

The minister, during her contributions on Day Four of the ongoing budget debate in the National Assembly, disclosed that the country has seen a massive increase in visitor arrivals.

“If we consider the events of the pandemic, then we might be better able to appreciate the magnitude of our achievement as regards to visitor arrivals,” Walrond said.

Arrivals increased in 2021 by 83 per cent, moving from 86,000 to 158,000; in the following year, arrivals increased to 82 per cent to 288,000, and in 2023 arrivals increased to 319,056.

“When looked at in the context of the pandemic, visitor arrivals increased by close to 207 per cent in the three years we took office; in fact, we were in the upper half league tables in the Caribbean as regards the rate of recovery,” Walrond said.

In further debunking claims made by members of the opposition that the influx of travellers was due mainly to the expanding oil-and-gas sector, the minister provided the House with statistics which contradicted this.

“The reports I received from the Guyana Tourism Authority paints a far different picture… For the Year 2022, business visitors numbered 47,000, while those coming for holiday and leisure numbered 143,000,” the tourism minister said.

These figures, she said, tripled with business visitors numbering over 53,000, while those for holiday and leisure numbered 177,000 in 2023.

Having made her point, she concluded, “Numbers speak for themselves.”

She said that Guyana was well over the world average as it relates to rebuilding its tourism industry.

“This recovery did not happen by accident, and it didn’t just happen naturally… In the early days of the pandemic, one of the measures that we took was to procure vaccines from wherever we could get them; our intention was to get our population as close as we could to full vaccination, so we could safely reopen,” Minister Walrond said.

It is expected that 2024 will be a historic year in relation to developments taking place in the tourism sector.

“We buckled down, did the work, and now we will let that work, and the results do the talking,” she said.

The minister related that the government is continuing to promote Guyana’s work on the international stage, referencing the recent works in 2023 which saw the country’s submission to the global platform placing third in the Caribbean’s tourism organisation.

Walrond said: “Our tourism product has been featured in prominent international publications, including Forbes, the Times, Telegraph, Daily Mail and World Adventure.”

In fact, she noted that Guyana was also ranked Number 13 out 35 best destinations for 2023 and beyond by National Geographic.

“We continue to work on infrastructure to support the tourism sector. Of course, one of the critical areas of which we have concentrated our efforts is airlift capacity,” Minister Walrond said.

She noted that the country has welcomed British Airways in the Guyana route, with direct flights to London, thereafter several other major airline companies came on stream.

These included Jet Blue and American Airlines, which have expanded their operations, thereby adding another daily route from Georgetown to Miami, while United Airlines will be introducing a new route with four flights weekly. Regional flights have also been extended.