Earnings from inbound visitors grew 59% last year

Infograph: TBS

The contribution of inbound visitors to the national exchequer grew around 59% year-on-year in 2021, thanks to the roll-out of massive vaccination across the South Asian region that also successfully contained the pandemic.

Earnings from inbound visitors amounted to a little over TK2,279 core last year in contrast to Tk1,196 crore in 2020 ((10 months), according to data from the Bangladesh Bank collected by Bangladesh Tourism Board.

Industry insiders have attributed such a growth mainly to business travellers and foreigners working in Bangladesh or engaged in humanitarian activities as the pandemic had barred leisure tourists from entering the country. 

In 2020 and 2021, leisure tourists hardly visited the country owing to Covid-19. Those who came to the country were foreigners who work in Bangladesh on tourist visas, non-resident Bangladeshis and business travellers, Masud Hossain, an inbound tour operator and managing director of Bengal Tours, told The Business Standard.

"Last year, altogether 10 people came to Bangladesh for travel purposes via my company. The number was more than 500 before the pandemic hit," he added.

In the meantime, Bangladesh Tourism Board has not updated data on international tourists after December 2021, according to sources knowledgeable about the matter.

To regularly update data of tourist arrivals in the country, the tourism board is now willing to develop a software with the assistance of the special branch of Bangladesh police, emulating the models of countries such as India, the Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. 

In 2020, the inbound tourism sector suffered a 35% negative growth year-on-year.   

The inbound tourism sector's contribution to the national exchequer stood at around Tk1,860 crore in 2019, Tk2,950 crore in 2018, TK2,445 crore in 2017, Tk866 crore in 2016, Tk696 crore in 2015, Tk528 crore in 2014 and Tk623 crore in 2013.   

"Earnings do not go up only because of a rise in the number of tourists. We rather have to see from which country more tourists have come. For example, an Indian tourist does not spend money equal to what an American one does," Assistant Director of Bangladesh Tourism Board Md Mazharul Islam told TBS.

Despite its vast potential, Bangladesh could not yet become a popular destination for foreign tourists in comparison to its neighbouring countries owing to poor tourism and airport infrastructure, complex visa policies, social restrictions and a lack of comfortable transportation facilities, according to experts. 

Bangladesh received three lakh in-bound tourists in 2019, the highest in its history since independence. The figures earlier were 2.48 lakh in 2018, 2.2 lakh in 2017, 1.69 lakh in 2016, 1.18 lakh in 2015.               

In 2019, the number of Indian tourists was 270,024, or 89% of the total inbound tourists, according to the tourism board.

Toufiq Rahman, an inbound tour operator and general secretary of Pacific Asia Travel Association (Pata) Bangladesh Chapter told TBS, "Only 30,000-40,000 foreigners would come to Bangladesh for purposes of travel in pre-Covid times."

As the Padma Bridge has opened, the number of Indian and Nepalese tourists is expected to go up by 25-50% in the coming days, said Indian diplomats in Dhaka and Bangladeshi diplomats in New Delhi, Guwahati and Kolkata.

Professor Akbaruddin Ahmad, former president of Tour Operators' Association of Bangladesh, said, "Indian and Nepalese tourists will be interested in visiting Bangladesh through the Padma Bridge. The government is even planning to connect the southern-western part of the country with the capital through improved road and railway networks in phases."

The government is also upgrading Mongla Port, making it an international port, with a view to easing the pressure on Chattogram Port.

With the emergence of a rising upper- and middle-class in the country in the last 15-20 years and construction of hundreds of cottages, hotels and motels, local tourism has also had an uplift, he added. 

Bangladesh Tourism Board is now working on preparing a master plan under the Seventh Five-Year Plan to develop the sector in the next 25 years.