Guyana has great potential as an eco-tourism destination. With its un-spoilt beauty, Guyana is a real tropical paradise of animals and plants that thrive in these natural areas.
Guyana offers a distinct tourism product that tourists can enjoy with vast open spaces, savannahs, virgin rainforests, mountains, huge rivers and waterfalls. Guyana boasts abundant wildlife, numerous species of flora, a variety of fauna and spectacular birdlife.
Tourism provides great opportunities for furthering Guyana’s economic development. Guyana is unique in its multifaceted tourism product, which has the potential to foster economic growth by tapping into large portions of the tourism market. Undoubtedly, Tourism will create new job opportunities, increase foreign currency revenue and promote interior development.
Over the years, initiatives are being taken to enhance the quality of the tourism product Guyana has to offer through the establishment of facilities to monitor standards, the extension of tourism development into new areas to create a more diversified product, the strengthening linkages between tourism and other sectors of the economy, and the development of culture and sports tourism in the view of the country’s rich and diversified cultural heritage.
With this expansive development taking place in the tourism industry, it is critical for standards and conformity assessment to be the supporting pillars of the industry. These should be weaved in the development process and be given topmost priority, particularly given the fact that tourists worldwide are more often than not exposed to high quality products and services during their stay at various destinations.
The Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS) through the establishment of a Technical Committee on Tourism has been developing standards that if fully implemented by our restaurants, hotels, resorts and other tourist establishments can provide a tremendous boost to our local tourism sector.
These standards provide a means of developing the sector by setting a bench mark for monitoring the quality of the products and services offered to tourists, establishing a basis for the training of the workforce in the tourism sector, and increasing productivity.
Standards already developed and approved as National Standards are the:
In addition, at the level of the CARICOM, two standards were approved for the Regional Tourism Sector, namely:
The “draft Guidelines for recreational water quality” is also to be finalized at the CARICOM Level.
It is clear that the tourism industry is on the right track for development but greater success can be achieved when tourist establishments integrate and intensify their efforts along with the other Public and Private Sector Agencies to foster growth and expansion. The implementation of standards must be a subset of these efforts.
For further information please contact the GNBS on telephone numbers: 219-0064, 219-0065, 219-0066
