‘Guyana, Caribbean must ‘scale up’ tourism investment, infrastructure’ – President Ali tells tourism confab
(Kaieteur News) – Guyana and the Caribbean region should be scaling up their tourism investment and infrastructure President Irfaan Ali told the State of Tourism Industry Conference 2026 (SOTIC) which opened on Wednesday in Georgetown.
He believes investment and infrastructure are at a very important point in the region’s tourism sector, and for the first time a strong connection between investment, investors, and governments must be present, otherwise they will fail the challenges of the future.
“I believe that it is at this point that we need to very clearly articulate that for tourism to succeed, compete, and stay alive in this region, we have to scale up our thinking, scale up our infrastructure, scale up our commitment and for people within the region, we need to scale up our approach,” Ali said.
President Irfaan Ali during his address to SOTIC. (DPI Photo)
Justifying his statement, he explained that if one looks around the world today, tourism can be defined by investment, especially primary investment into what is termed as transport linkages. The region’s most challenging disadvantage is exactly this and countries are beginning to realise that infrastructure that is led by transport investment is not just a key factor for survival, it is critical, the Guyanese leader said.
“It is very important for our populations to understand that we need also to scale up the investments we are making, thinking in a larger, more dynamic way. The projects that we contemplate for the future must be fundamentally different from our traditional approach to investment in tourism. When we conceptualise a project today, we must be building for resilience, building for market, building for experience, building for expectation, building for storytelling. An airport today is not an airport of yesterday. It’s not an airport for persons to come in and go out,” he said.
“The airport itself must be able to tell a story and present a picture, and this is one of the reasons there is a huge investment being made in airports and air hubs, to allow an experience to be had,” President Ali said. In Guyana, he said this change is being embraced, and this is the reason the government has decided to invest into Terminal 2, which will not be seen only as a new terminal, but as a terminal that will tell the story of Guyana and where Guyana aspires to be. “It is important for us to understand what the important elements are both in the private sector and the public sectors, and this must be the shaper for investment decisions, and policy making.”
Source: Kaieteur News
