Stakeholders sensitised in tourism sector

May 30, 2009 News

Stakeholders during the workshop.

The Guyana National Bureau of Standards in collaboration with the Caribbean Regional Organization for Standards and Quality (CROSQ) on Thursday commenced a sensitisation workshop on promoting competiveness in the tourism sector at the Tower Hotel, Main Street, Georgetown.

The workshop focused on sensitising stakeholders to the importance of standards in the hotel industry. They should be familiar with the standards development process, and their role in the process, and they must also be aware of the role of the tourism sector to Guyana’s economy and its contribution to the future development of the sector as a result of the implementation of the standards.

The workshop also aimed at sensitising the stakeholders to the regional policy guidelines for tourism standards from the Caribbean Regional Tourism Policy Framework.
Representative of the Guyana Tourism Authority, Haralsingh, said that the workshop comes at a time when the world is grappling with a financial crisis, and when tourism arrivals to the region are declining.
“The tourism industry is a very competitive one. Visitors’ expectations are very high and we must be able to meet their expectations. Standards and regulations will help us to compete in the areas of quality, service cleanliness, operations and safety.”

He added that the Guyana Tourism Regulations would help the industry to be competitive and to raise the bar on standards and excellence.
Representative from the Caribbean Tourism Organisation, Gail Henry, noted that Guyana as one of the developing tourism destinations in the region is making great strides in terms of developing regulations.
These steps are essential to improve and enhance the image of the destination and to ensure that visitors have the type of experience that would bring them back to Guyana.
“It’s very important to have standards across the board, in order to harmonise health standards that are linked to other sectors that impact on tourism as well, because as you know, tourism is linked with many sectors and it is very important to take a cross sectoral approach to development of standards in this regard.”

As it relates to the financial crisis, she noted that countries are having different experiences at this time. Statistics for the first quarter of this year indicates that many people are not travelling or are holding off on their travels.
“So this is a very difficult time for many destinations in the region. Some are doing a bit better than others in the sense that, based on the statistics that we have, tourism have not declined significantly. Whereas, there are others where arrivals have declined drastically in comparison with the same period last year.
“It is something that each destination is grappling with.”