US$7.2m hospitality, tourism institute underway
Prime Minister Mark Phillips yesterday turned the sod signalling the commencement of construction of the Hospitality and Tourism Training Institute (HTTI) in Port Mourant, Corentyne to the tune of US $7.2m as he said that the government is working to create 50,000 jobs within the tourism sector by 2030.
HTTI comes under the Guyana Technical Training College Inc (GTTCI) where last week President Irfaan Ali commissioned phase one – a Facility Simulator – allowing students to have hands on training before heading offshore to work on oil extracting platforms.
GTTCI after fully being constructed will be designed to facilitate oil and gas training (Track 1) funded by ExxonMobil and its partners, the Hospitality and Tourism Institute (Track 2) funded by the government with the Caribbean Development Bank and the Port Mourant Training College (Track 3) which falls under GuySuCo and the Ministry of Agriculture.
Phillips said “In the hospitality and tourism sector, customer satisfaction is the key to success. By training personnel to excel in customer service, communication, and problem-solving, businesses can ensure that visitors have memorable and enjoyable experiences, encouraging them to return and recommend the destination to others. Ultimately, investing in training for the local workforce not only benefits the individuals themselves by enhancing their employability but also bolsters the reputation and competitiveness of the destination as a whole.”
He then stressed that government is working to train people for jobs so that they do not have to be on the unemployment line. “In this Region, a hotel and other hospitality ventures are being constructed at Palmyra. But there are also hotels in New Amsterdam and Corriverton and resorts in other parts of this Region that can benefit from training that will be offered by the Hospitality and Tourism Training Institute. But I want to make it clear that this Institute will provide training for persons across all of Guyana.”
As such he said that the establishment and support of a Hospitality and Tourism Training Institute represent a strategic investment in Guyana’s human resource capacity. “By equipping individuals with the skills and knowledge necessary to excel in the hospitality and tourism sector, we are not only empowering our workforce but also laying the foundation for a sustainable and thriving tourism industry.”
He pointed out that the funding for the project was secured from the Caribbean Development Bank which he thanked for their support “which implicitly recognizes the importance of tourism to our long-term economic development plans.”
Phillips said that the government has long underscored the importance of tourism noting that prior to the pandemic, tourism was a trillion-dollar sector accounting for 10.4% of global GDP 10.3% of all jobs and 20% of all new jobs. “The sector took a major hit from the pandemic with tourism spending being reduced from more than US$5 trillion in 2019 to US$2.44 trillion in 2020. Some 63 million jobs were lost.”
However, he pointed out that tourism has proven to be a resilient sector adding that in both 2022 and 2023, tourism grew by more than 20% each year and the global tourism sector is now estimated to be around 90% of its pre-pandemic levels. In 2022, it had resurged to be around 8% of global GDP.
Homing in on Guyana, Phillips said, Guyana is seeking to diversify its economy and build resilient sectors. “While we are an oil-producing state, our future is not exclusively hitched to the petroleum sector. Oil is a finite resource. On the
other hand, Guyana has been deemed to have a comparative advantage in sustainable tourism.”
According to him, an IDB study done in 2015 established that Guyana has a comparative advantage, over its Caribbean and South American neighbours, in nature-based and adventurebased tourism. “Nature-based tourism has a huge market in our Region. In 2022, Costa Rica attracted more than 2.4 million arrivals by air alone.”
Among the factors identified as bequeathing a comparative advantage to Guyana are Guyana’s low negative impact on the environment, extensive forest cover, estimated at over 80% of our land mass, and land-based ecosystem diversity.
Tourism market
He said, that the government is committed to building a strong tourism market. “Just to do some simulations if we can attract by 2030, a total of one million tourists, each of whom spends $1,000 US, this would inject about US$1B into our economy.”
He said that tourism is Guyana’s fourth largest export sector and has accounted for about 2.3% of local GDP in 2021. “In 2022, it is estimated, by G-Invest, that the country earned G$64.1 billion (2022) based on the average expenditure per visitor per type at US$1,060. Last year, Guyana racked up a record-breaking 319,056 visitor arrivals.”
He stressed, that it can be seen around the world that tourism can be a massive generator of jobs. “In 2014, in Guyana tourism accounted for 8,300 direct jobs and if you use a multiplier of 3, then the sector would have accounted for some 24,000 indirect and direct jobs. We believe that by 2030, we can create a tourism sector that employs about 50,000 jobs.”
However, to tap more of this vast tourism market, he said Guyana has to overcome several challenges explaining that the country has to increase the number of hotel rooms available. He noted, “We are looking over the medium term to increase the number of rooms by about 3,000 rooms. In this regard, several internationally branded hotels are being established to allow us to edge closer to this target.”
The Prime Minister cautioned: “We have other challenges to address, including the high cost of air travel, improving destination marketing, improving our product development and, in terms of today’s activity improving the training of hospitality service workers and reducing the high turnover of staff in the sector.”
Furthermore, he said, that this was the most important reason why they are investing in the construction of the Hospitality and Tourism Training Institute. “We have to develop continuous cohorts of trained hospitality workers to assume the management
of this sector and to provide the multiplicity of services required in the sector.”
In March last year, the Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana and the Barbados Coalition of Service Industries signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that will see Guyana benefiting from ways to improve its tourism products, including accommodation, food and management.
The signing of this MoU was a result of the St Barnabas Accord between President Irfaan Ali and Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, which covers tourism and international transport.
Under the said agreement, President Ali had announced that Barbados would assist in training Guyanese for jobs in the tourism and accommodation sector. However, since that announcement in 2021, there has been no word on the startup of the programme to train over 6,000 Guyanese.