MS Serenissima’s wraps up visit to Guyana

Apr 01, 2019 News

Business Minister Dominic Gaskin yesterday visited the MV Serenissima cruise ship as it wrapped up a successful stop in Guyana.
The 76 tourists over the three days visited the Kaieteur Falls, the Baganara Resort, the popular Essequibo River and had a tour around Georgetown.
After meeting the Captain of MS Serenissima, Erik Juranovic and touring the ship, Minister Gaskin told the Department of Public Information that from all reports the visit was successful
The Business Minister who has responsibility for Tourism explained that the “cruise ship (Serenissima) conducts a number of tours all over the world… they move from the Antarctic to the Indian Ocean to the Amazon and are likely to be back here in another two years.”

A scene from Minister Gaskin’s trip aboard the MV Serenissima

He pointed out that in the tourism sector Guyana is seen as a “niche market.” “Captain Juranovic described the cruise ship package to Guyana as an ‘Expedition Cruise’ which means it is more focused on particular places of interests and learning from those places visited and, in that regard, Guyana is a good port of call.”
According to Minister Gaskin, the Guyana Tourism Association conducted a consultancy in 20018 to determine what needed to be put in place to attract more cruise ships to visit Guyana. He also noted the current infrastructure capacity at port Georgetown can accommodate ships similar in size to that of the MV Serenissima and this will allow Guyana to “remain a niche market as opposed to a mass market.”
Responding to the incident with of one of the passengers the minister clarified said “It was an unfortunate however everything was in place to ensure the safety of passengers but one individual left on his own, quite late in the evening, even though there was an arrangement that would have allowed him to have a tour of the city’s nightlife or to be accompanied but he chose to go alone.”
A Special task force was established to ensure that the tourists visit here was well organized and executed, this task force is made up of officials from several agencies including the GRA, Port Health, Tour Operators the Police and the CDC.
General Manager of Wilderness Explorers which is responsible for the Destination Management Andrea de Caires noted that there have been no incidents with passengers or with any of the tours apart from that one incident and is grateful to all of the agencies who collaborated to make the visit run as “smooth as silk”.
The Serenissima set sail for Suriname yesterday afternoon.

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