The entertainment crowd in Guyana is limited

Jun 18, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Guyanese like to boast about the night life in Guyana. They brag about the many restaurants, clubs, waterholes and night spots as an indication of the pervasiveness and intensity of the partying in Guyana.

The image that Guyanese do lots of dining and partying is of course a myth.
This past week, it was announced that one of Guyana’s fine dining restaurants will be closed during weekdays.
This has placed a dent in the contention that Guyanese eat out with great regularity. The closure of this fine dining restaurant merely confirms that there are simply not enough customers to keep a fine dining restaurant viable during weekdays.
There used to be a fine dining restaurant at the Tower Hotel. It was one of the best in the Caribbean. It was called ‘The Flame’. Well the flame went out of business no sooner than it started. Again, the problem is that there simply were not enough customers to sustain a fine dining restaurant. The number of patrons was simply too small.
This is one of the problems that exclusive joints face in Guyana. There is not a strong enough customer base to sustain the operations. Those who therefore feel that investing in clubs and nightspots will enhance their fortunes had better think again.
The few nightspots that are popular in Guyana are only heavily patronized on Saturday nights, one night per week. This can never be sufficient to cover the investments that are needed in these entities.
Promoters in Guyana will tell that the party crowd in Guyana is too limited. The same people go over and over to the shows held at popular clubs. The market is limited. The big concerts will attract a larger crowd because they are cheaper, but even so, the spending power is heavily constrained and someone may only go to a few concerts every year. The only party that some poor folks go to is their staff party. Many go simply for the freeness because it is the only time in the year that they can afford to go out.
Thousands attended the flag-raising ceremony held at Durban Park. But if there was a charge to attend that event, that large crowd would not have been present.
The limited market for entertainment in Guyana is a major constraint to tourism development. There are simply too many limited choices because the clubs and bars mainly do good business on weekends alone and the rest of the week sales are slow or non-existent.
The absence of fine dining is going to hurt tourism in Guyana because some visitors to our country want first world standards, and they are not going to find many fine dining restaurants in Guyana because it is not financially feasible to run such an outfit in Guyana.
The lack of persons patronizing night clubs, restaurants and bars on weekdays is going to stagnate the entertainment industry and without entertainment, tourism will dry up because there is nothing else much for people to see and participate in.
The limited entertainment market also shows the wisdom of the decision to close nightclubs at 2 am. It is not a case whereby tens of thousands of persons throughout Guyana are going to be inconvenienced by the closure at 2 am of bars and night clubs. It is a small band of people who can afford to party regularly. The numbers do not run into tens of thousands. It therefore makes sense to stick to the curfew hours and not relax it at all.

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