Tourism Authority working with GRA to lower travel costs

– as expense cited as major challenge for domestic tourism

The expense Guyanese incur to travel and see beautiful destinations in their own country has often been cited as a challenge to domestic tourism and as such, the Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) is working to correct the situation.3
In a recent interview with Guyana Times, GTA Director Brian Mullis acknowledged that this was a major challenge. He noted that the tourism body was working along with stakeholders and other Government agencies, particularly the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) to try to bring prices down.
“I think the most commonly cited challenge includes the cost of travel in Guyana. It is prohibitively expensive for many people (including) residents of Georgetown, expats, etc. I think that problem is multi-faceted. But it has to do with the enabling environment to offer tax concessions that make travel more affordable,” Mullis said.
“We are actually working with GRA on the existing concessions, because many of them are not highly accessible to the sector. So we’ve been trying to see how we can make them more accessible, more user friendly, more attractive.”
Mullis noted that moving forward, they would maintain consultations with stakeholders to ensure that priority recommendations can be implemented to improve the GTA’s tourism policies.
“Each year, starting last year, we began getting all the stakeholders together to identify what are the priority recommendations to improve policy. Because what’s happened in the past is different groups have been putting forward their recommendations that have been in silos versus a coordinated, collaborative effort. So for 2020, our priority recommendations will be based on business feedback,” he disclosed.
“So while the policy was never approved at the highest levels, we continue to develop the sector. And without a roadmap, how can you know where you need to go and how you’re going to get there? So, we engaged stakeholders across the sector to create a strategic action plan. And we’ve been implementing it for the past few months. We update it twice annually, to ensure we recognise what is working and what is not working.”
Guyana has been making strides when it comes to eco-tourism. Earlier this year, the country was named the number one “Best of Ecotourism” destination in the world from a selection of the finest destinations. The award was presented to Guyana at the ITB global travel trade fair in Berlin, Germany.
The second annual “Best of Top 100” Awards is a selection of the finest top 100 destinations selected by a panel of experts, who review sustainability success stories submitted by destinations worldwide.
The newly-created “Best of Ecotourism” category was added in 2019 and pitted Guyana against very well-known and experienced ecotourism destinations, such as Sierra Gorda in Mexico, Tmatboey in Cambodia, and the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador.