Accessible Tourism in Bangladesh’s Tourism and Hospitality Management Sector

Accessible Tourism is a concept where everyone get chance to enjoy and Travel any tourist destination despite of their disabilities and special need. Tourism with this concept is for people who have special needs like physical disabilities, mental disabilities, elderly people, people with small children and more. To make this possible tourist destinations need to  install with such facilities by which everyone can have access of that place. Day by day it’s getting more adapted by different countries. But to ensure this facility some investment and trained staff is needed. But the adaptation rate isn’t that big. Specially its more common in developed countries and in those countries where tourism is a big deal. But for the third world and developing countries, it’s just a fancy thing. Same happens with Bangladesh. Bangladesh’s local tourism sector is thriving but there is no action taken for special needed people and to attract them in the consumer list.

 

 According to WHO and Bangladesh health ministry 16 million people in Bangladesh have physical or mental disabilities which is 9.7 % of the current population. Bangladesh’s Tourism Industry was started thriving before Covid. In 2019 Tourism industry’s contribution on country’s GDP was Tk80,450 crore (10 billion USD) or 4.4% of the GDP. Employment on tourism sector  was 2.9% of total employment. But in this total scenario accessible tourism wasn’t part of it.

 

Bangladesh’s main problem in tourism sector is that it’s not well structured and the industry is relatively new. Second problem is her massive population in a such small land area. Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated country in the world. In the last decade the country had a impressive improvement in the economy and in infrastructure. Bangladesh had a bad road connectivity before 2010. But the sector gradually improved throughout the decade. As the economic capacity and transportation sector started expanding so does the Tourism Sector. Bangladesh tourism industry exceed 10 billion USD contribution in GDP in 2019. At that time Bangladesh drew only 329,000 foreign tourists among them almost 200,000 were Indian.

 

Why Bangladesh’s Tourism sector isn’t familiar with Accessible Tourism?

The very first reason why the sector is way behind to serve Accessible tourism is that this sector is new and the businesses around it have lack of knowledge about modern tourism ideas. Business involved in the tourism sector lack modern business ideas and have little information about foreign tourism policies.

Then Bangladesh Tourism Board doesn’t have any policies to support this concept. Bangladesh Tourism Board and Bangladesh Tourism Corporation look after the tourism and Hospitality sector. This two entity’s work have little impact on the tourism sector. That’s why tourism related business often caught charging too much than a reasonable price. In this situation implementing Access Tourism is not quite possible.

 

Thinking no space for people with special need, they do not engage in the tourism. So, what happened is that no such demand is created. When there is no actual demand for a service, service providers won’t want to supply such things. In this type of situation, someone has to act as a catalyst. In this scenario Tourism Board and Corporation can be that catalyst. To be that they need strong rules and regulation and continues monitoring.

 

Benefits Of Accessible Tourism

Access or accessible tourism is not just a business opportunity it can play a good impact on our society. Almost 15% of the world’s Population have special need, either they have disabilities or they need some extra care like parents with infant or young children or elderly citizens. This part of the population got few opportunities to go outside and refresh their mind. If tourism sector considers them as potential customers and decorate their business in such way, there is a huge possibility to increase their business. Bangladesh Governments target is to increase tourism’s GDP contribution from around 4% to 10%. To do that Government has to use this 15% population and take necessary steps. Beside Chittagong Hill Tracks most of the famous Tourist  spots are in plane land in Bangladesh. So implementing Access Tourism In Bangladesh shouldn't be  an impossible task.