Possible Challenges And Opportunities Of Tourism And Hospitality Management In   Bangladesh

   Bangladesh is a beautiful country. It’s green, warm, sunny and people here are incredible. And it’s full of beautiful natural landscapes, rivers, beaches, forests, mountains and more. Just perfect to attract people and tourists around the world. Despite all of this, the number of foreign tourists Bangladesh drawn in a year is not that impressive. But like it’s economy, number of local tourists has grown on a massive number in the last decade.

 

   Bangladesh has a lot of potential to be a tourism giant. She has some beautiful sea beaches including Cox’s Bazar, longest in the world; Sundarbans, largest mangrove forest in the world and the only place on earth where Royal Bengal Tiger lives. She also has beautiful mountain grown forest fill with amazing rivers and lakes in the Parbbato Chattogram region. Just perfect to attract the western and European tourists. But the core beauty of the country isn’t lied on these special places but in the warm welcomeness and simplicity of the people, villages where mother nature is still helping farmers to harvest, rivers full with fishes, Hawors and Beels with complicated behaves and so on. But somehow this beauty and fame couldn’t reach outside of the boarder much. And still the number of foreign tourists come to visit here is not impressive.

 

             

 

 Source: Bangladesh Tourism Board’s website, Daily Star, Wikipedia.

 

Just before the pandemic, in 2019 Bangladesh drawn about 3,23,295 tourists from around the world, 21 percent higher than 2018 which was a record in the history of Bangladesh. But 84% of the tourist came from neighbor country India. One important fact is that there are many families here on Bangladesh who has relatives in India. So many of them every year come here to visit their relatives not to have a vacation or on tourism purpose. But they come here with a tourist visa. So the real number of tourist from India will be lesser.

 

According to the BTB (Bangladesh Tourism Board) , the second highest of 7,225 tourists visited Bangladesh from United States while 7,004 came from China and 4,195 came from Japan taking third and fourth position respectively.

 

The countries like United Kingdom, Malaysia, Australia, Canada, Germany, and Saudi Arabia were on the top 10 list in terms of Bangladesh visit last year. But the numbers of foreign tourist came here to visit Bangladesh except India is still very low.

 Now tourism Industry has four basic fundaments:

 
1.    Transportation
2.    Accommodation
3.    Food and beverages

4.    Entertainment

 

This report will discuss the possibilities, Opportunities and problems these four sectors has in Bangladesh

                                            

                                    Transportation
 

Transportation system plays a vital role for the tourism industry. It's also the very first thing a tourist Or A visitor dig or notice before planning or fixing a place to visit. No one wants to have an unpleasant journey. Traveling always pleases one’s spirit, soul and mind. But it also gives the body a physical pressure. So everyone wants to avoid bad travel experience. That’s why smooth travel arrangement is the first key to drawn tourist.

Bangladesh is a small country with a huge population. It was poor and politically unstable for a long time. Mismanagement, corruption, lack of transparency and planning made a vulnerable transportation network throughout the country from which Bangladesh is still suffering.  But in the last decade Bangladesh has gone under a huge transformation. Govt has done a really good job to update and improve the transportation sector. But with the booming economy and industrial development still govt is struggling to solve this issue.

 

Bangladesh’s biggest tourist spot is Cox’s Bazar famous for it’s beach, mountain and now a new spot has been added The marine drive. But the connectivity with Cox’s Bazar and the rest of the country is in very bad shape. Though it has a

 

 

airport that is operating flight will Chattogram and Dhaka but the mass number of people use the roads as it’s cheaper. For geographical reason one has to go over Chattogram to reach Cox’s Bazar. Now Chattogram has a good connectivity with the rest of the country by air rail road and waterways right now, but the condition of Chattogram to Cox’s Bazar road is not good.  It has just a two lane which is badly suffering to cope with the increased vehicles, often occurring accidents.

 

 

Good news is that govt has taken a project to improve the road into a six lane highway. It will vastly improve the connectivity. Currently there is no rail link between Chattogram and Cox’s Bazar, but another project is under construction and estimated to be finished in 2022 solve this problem and make a new rail line between this to city.

After that connectivity will be smoother and tourist will increase.  

Next biggest tourist spots are in Parbatto Chattogram region, Sylhet, Saint Martin Island, Kuakata and Sundarbans. Among them from the capital city Dhaka to Sylhet’s connectivity is in good shape. Other’s condition is not quite good like Dhaka-Sylhet route. But after opening of Padma bridge Dhaka-Sundarbans(Khulna) and Dhaka-Patuakhali (Kuakata) route will be easy and less time costly.  

Parbatto Chattogram is a big area combined with three district Rangamati, Khagrachari and Bandarban. Geography of this area is quite rough filled with mountain forest rivers and lakes. So it’s a tough thing to have a smooth connectivity. Bangladesh army is in charge here to maintain the security and also to guide the tourists. So, despite of the rough landscape tourist get a warm welcome here and the place is also very beautiful. It’s the reason why hundreds of thousand local and foreign tourists visit this area every year.

 

                                                            

                               Accommodation

 

Accommodation plays a vital role in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry. Sometimes itself could become a tourist destination like The Burj Al Arab hotel of Dubai or the beauty boarding of the old Dhaka.

This sector has grown quite big at almost every tourist Destinations in the country. With the private companies and entrepreneur’s involvement, this sector is serving quite good. But in the peak season too much tourists gathers in the main tourist spots. And often hotel officials fail to deliver standard services. This spread bad impressions which should be taken care of. And hotels need to improve their management and service skills.

Right now, Government doesn’t have any monitoring policy on hotels or motels. Many hotel authorities taking this as an opportunity. Many big hotels are using number of ‘stars’ that they don’t have and using this to attract more tourists. But eventually they are not providing services with the standards. This is a fraud.

Small hotel and motels Sometimes charged too much money, often harass the consumers. These issues need to solve soon, no foreigners take these things well.

 

           

               Entertainment and Food & Beverages

 

This two sector are in better position relatively to the others. Foods and culture of the country always been a key factor to drawn tourists. Recently social media give a big impact on Tourism and Hospitality Management sector. During last two year some of the world’s famous Food and travel vloggers have visited Bangladesh. It’s clear from their vlogs that they enjoyed here very much especially the food and the warmness of the people. Millions of people around the world have watched their videos which was a free advertisement for the tourism sector of Bangladesh.

 

Entertainment sector in Bangladesh is quite good. Bangladesh has many beautiful tourist spots. Some of the spots are well known and some of them are still underrated. Good news is that by the help of social media these underrated spots also getting attention. Like the Mithamoen upozila From Kishoreganj District, a beautiful place which got viral last year now is a heaven for bikers. There are also many beautiful places that are not well known by the people. Like in the Bhola district some new spot has been discovered like char Kukri-Mukri, Char Fashion. But for the marketing policy these places often not getting much attention. So the authorities and the businessmen need to improve their marketing strategy.

Unfortunately with a old and colorful culture side entertainment sector couldn’t grow much. Though sync between modern music and Tourism industry is good but others don’t. Culture based entertainments is praised by all over the world and tourist. Specially foreign travelers always want to know the culture of the country they are visiting. Best way to know them is the culture base entertainments like rural music, dance, dramas, theatre. Adding these to hotel, resort or bars entertainment is a common practice in all over the world but in Bangladesh the picture is different. Solo and different type of entertainers around the tourist spots are also decreasing. Hotels, restaurants, resorts could hire these entertainers more to increase their decoration and environment. It would spread and preserved the culture.

 

 

Bangladesh has some of the worlds delicious and unique foods. Specially Bangladesh is famous for variety of fresh water fishes, different type of pithas, unique fruits, vegetables and more. It’s also has some unique beef dishes like kalabhuna, nola and the world famous Chattogram’s Mejban. Interesting thing is that, despite of a small country there are variety of dishes which changes districts to district. Sweet dishes are also world famous. There are huge variety of cheap and tasty street foods too.

Lots of new and old restaurants are serving local and foreigners. There are many world class restaurants currently operating in Bangladesh. In on sentence the food of Bangladesh is incredible. But due to Muslim majority and manners alcoholic drinks are not quite open. Bars have many restrictions open drinking and selling alcoholic drinks are not allowed. Only big hotels and licensed bars can sell it. Many foreign tourists who love drinking doesn’t feel good about that. There is another issue, in recent time many local shops and restaurants were accused with providing stale and adulterate food. These things need to be stopped soon.

 Bangladesh has a huge potential to become a tourism state. But it also has some issues that need to be solve soon. Due to the pandemic not only Bangladesh’s but also the whole world’s tourism industry is straggling. Many families shifted their way of income from this industry. Many got business lost. So the govt need to step forward and make solid plan for the future and the post pandemic recovery.