Director General of Tourism, Donald Sinclair, and a team from the Department of Tourism at the press briefing presentation
The Business Ministry has, through the Department of Tourism, embarked on a series of workshops to boost tourism development within the 10 Administrative regions of Guyana. The Regional Tourism Planning Workshops commenced on Friday in Bartica, Region Seven.
The forums are in accordance with the Tourism Policy which was drafted in 2015 and is currently undergoing extensive consultations. The department is now adopting a decentralized approach to tourism planning in order to facilitate within each region the development which would inherently benefit the country at large.
Speaking at a press briefing on Thursday, the Director General of the Department of Tourism, Donald Sinclair, highlighted that the workshops were crafted on the basis of three main objectives, but the overall objective is to enhance the understanding of stakeholders relative to the role that tourism can play in the development of each region.
He added that the forums will facilitate the identification of tourism hotspots within each region, and elaborate on the lines of action needed to strengthen tourism-based businesses in and around the established hotspots.
The Department of Tourism is hoping to attract the attendance of as many as 25 persons to the workshops in store. Participants will be selected from a pool of regional decision-makers (Chairmen and REOs) along with the owners and managers of key tourism establishments (hotels, guest houses, restaurants, transportation services, places of entertainment, event organizers and sports and cultural organizations) as well as representatives of the banking and security sectors within the 10 regions of Guyana.
Highlighting the intentions of the decentralised planning initiative, the Director General of Tourism noted, “The aim of these workshops is to spread the planning of tourism to all regions of Guyana as a means of having the regional authorities more involved in tourism planning.” He went on to say, “We know that the regional authorities should be the ones who know their regions best, who with some guidance will be able to identify what we call the tourism hotspots.”The workshops will be conducted in each of the ten Administrative Regions, during which an agreed list of hotspots would be established in each. This decentralized approach of outlining tourism strategies would result in the defining of roles and actions needed by stakeholders to boost tourism within the regions, which will eventually attract both domestic and international visitors to these areas throughout Guyana.
