Travel and tourism in Bangladesh

Compared to around 20 or 25 years ago, Bangladeshis travel a lot nowadays. There are certain reasons behind this change:

• The emergence of a corporate class within the country

• Overall development of the country’s economic condition and a general increase in income of the beneficiaries of this development

• The steadily shrinking size of the family

• Innumerable tour and travel companies cropping up in the private sector facilitating local and foreign travel

• Development of infrastructure in the country’s communication system

Despite all of these developments, there are still many amazing places of natural beauty within the country that remain undiscovered to the people.

Bangladesh is replete with sites of natural beauty and resources. With adequate government and private investment, these could very easily be developed as attractive tourist resorts for local and foreign tourists.

Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai are examples of such transformation. They did not have much natural beautiful landscapes, but they have used their resources to artificially, and successfully, create such cities that tourists flock to those places from all corners of the world. They have become central hubs of tourism, globally. Yet we have not been able to do anything in our country in this regard, despite our bountiful natural sites of rivers, hills, sea, greenery, flora, fauna and more.

Our tourism industry is no longer at a nascent stage. Plans must be made for a higher level of tourism and actually implement these plans. This sector holds immense potential and requires immediate attention.

*Hasan Mansur is a pioneer of private sector tourism in Bangladesh and the managing director of The Guide Tours Limited.

This write-up appeared in Prothom Alo’s special publication on tourism ‘Barnil Berano’. Beginning with this piece as a starter, extracts from the publication will regularly be rewritten In English for our readers.