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Overseas Guyanese should be our main tourist market
Letter from John Mair published in Stabroek News
Dear Editor,
I think Minister of Tourism Manzoor Nadir and the country have got it badly
wrong on tourism. They're barking up the wrong greenheart in trying to
attract thousands of innocent eco-tourists to El Dorado... It simply ain't
going to work. Sorry.
Let me share two experiences this week. The first personal, the second
national. My cousin Alison has not been back to Guyana since she was a
little girl thirty years ago. Yet, there she was having dinner with me in
the Peg-A-Sus last Wednesday night. She and her husband, Joe, are here with
thirty other couples from Toronto, all Guyanese in origin.
Sampling the delights of Shanklands and Baganara for the Easter weekend.
She's here for two weeks and told me she will spend getting on for US$4000.
for her family's vacation. She was in Nirvana, coming back to the land of
her birth. It was pure memory lane but great memories and she may come
again. For every Alison, there are thousands more like her in the New York,
Miami and Toronto diasporas. They just need to be tapped up.
Meanwhile, there you were on the 'Clipper Adventure' stuck on a sandbank in
Essequibo with over one hundred American eco-tourists. They'd come in the
first ever cruise ship in Guyanese waters (and on our sandbanks too) to look
for flora, fauna and Kaiteur. They thought it was wonderful and said so (but
then they were mainly Americans so what else would you expect...)
Everybody seemed excited at this moment of Evergreen hope. It looked like
Guyana might have cracked the big one: the international eco-tourist market.
The floodgates would soon be opening if they already had not. A brave new
would round the corner. But one Cock-of-the-Rock signing on Kaiteur does not
make a summer. You are chasing a chimera there. An illusion. In eco-tourism,
today's hot spot is tomorrow's icicle.
Rethink the strategy whilst you can. Think of cousin Alison. Think of the
massive numbers in the diaspora. Think of their residual sentiments for `My
Guyana'. Think of their disposable wealth and how you and our tourist
industry might get your hands on some of it. A Guyanese (even an overseas
Guyanese) bird in the hand is worth several eco-tourist birds in the bush.
It's not late to change direction. About turn, Manzoor. Guyana will benefit.
Yours faithfully, John Mair
Letter published in Stabroek News, 5 April 2002.
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