ANOTHER WHITE ELEPHANT?

Oct 01, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Elephants are soon going to take over the country. All around ‘white elephants’ are developing, compliments of investors being lured into making huge investments in the hospitality sector with a pipe dream about how the hosting of Cricket World Cup 2007 would transform the economy of Guyana.

Brave is the man who is going to invest in a hotel in Guyana. He deserves a national award. That is literally taking a risk.

But it was not just the large investors who were sold their dream about the tournament churning out profits for the hospitality sector. A number of small homeowners were encouraged to upgrade their homes so as to accommodate the tens of thousands of tourists that would come to see the local matches.

A few days ago, a minister of the government was daring anyone to show where one hundred house lots were distributed in one day in any other country.

Well, I dare anyone to show me one hundred of those persons who upgraded their homes and offered bread and breakfast accommodation and who got business during the hosting of Cricket World Cup.

I would assume that most of these persons took loans from the banks and now have to pay back these sums with interest. It is the same with the fancy hotels that were constructed, because persons believed that there would be a downpour of tourists for the matches.

They were sold a pipe dream. True, arrivals suffered because India and Pakistan were knocked out after the preliminary rounds.

But even in those countries which hosted matches between these two teams and even in Barbados where the finals were held, there was no monsoon of tourists enough to create the sort of long-term benefits that were being projected.

In the run-up to that tournament, the government had offered concessions and had even advanced sums to assist two hotels under construction.

One was completed on time and fortunately – yes fortunately – the other was not. It was a stroke of luck that the second hotel at Providence was not completed because today it would have been a white elephant.

When the President of Guyana was asked at a press conference whether other hotels would receive similar benefits, he made some remarks that were critical of a certain hotel. Well, the slight has passed, but it seems to also be returning.

Another major hotel, it was said, would be constructed in Kingston, but that deal seems to have been put on the backburner. Had that hotel been built today, it would have suffered the same fate as most of the hotels in Guyana, which are struggling to attract guests.

At the ceremony recently at the Ogle aerodrome, the President alluded to the need for another major hotel in Guyana and threw in a mouthful about some hotel where something was falling off the ceiling. He was quick however to remark that it was NOT Jerry’s hotel.

Those comments were not seen by the private sector as portraying a negative image of Guyana.

It does not take a logician to deduce which hotel was being referred to. The President however is entitled to his opinion about standards, but regardless of what he says, the evidence will remain that there are low rates of occupancy in almost all hotels in Guyana, and therefore the encouragement of the construction of another major hotel in Guyana will lead to another white elephant.

Why build another major hotel in Guyana? Where will the guests come from? A major hotel in Guyana is doing so badly that a large number of its workers were laid off recently.

Others are barely obtaining guests. Even if these hotels opted to convert to short-time hotels, they are not going to have the desired level of occupancy.

So please, let us end all this talk about the need for a new hotel. The elephant, that Guyana received as a gift in the seventies from India, and which was housed in the zoo, has long been dead. But we have a lot of white elephants around the country. We do not need another.

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ANOTHER WHITE ELEPHANT?

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