-By Raquib Siddiqi
The year 2013, is going to be marked as the worst year for the nascent tourism industry of Bangladesh.
According to tourism industry insiders, the nearly 4,000 crore taka investment in the sector is under serious threat. Inbound tour operators had to cancel most of their bookings. Domestic scene was also equally bleak. Cox’s Bazar, Sunderbans and Chittagong Hill Tracks—the three most attractive tourist destinations in the country- remained almost without tourists for entire 2013. Usually, the size of domestic tourists is about 50 lakh (hundred thousand), but this year the number has reduced to only less than 1.5 lakh.In addition to tour operation, transportation and hospitality sectors are the other big losers. The absence of tourism traffic both foreign and domestic, caused the hospitality and transportation industries to suffer huge financial losses. In addition, transportation industry suffered physical damages from targeted violence.
The promise of 2013, to be a milestone year for Bangladesh tourism with the industry moving another solid notch forward over the performance of 2012, has been completely shattered, due to unexpected civil unrest and associated violence.
Political unrest and associated violence—in which about 200 people have been killed and thousands wounded in clashes between protesters and security forces in different parts of the country—during the year hit the entire tourism sector, tour operation, transportation and hospitality hard, very hard indeed, virtually without any respite during the whole year.
The forecast: Despite government neglect, tourism in Bangladesh has made significant progress due to contribution of the private sector. The total contribution of travel and tourism to GDP was Taka 394.8 billion or 4.3 per cent of GDP in 2012, and was forecast to rise by 7.5 per cent in 2013, and by 6.8 per cent per annum to Taka 819.4bn in 2023. It recorded Taka 193.0 billion as the direct contribution of travel and tourism to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2012. This is 2.1 per cent of total GDP, according to a study of the World Travel and Tourism Council {WTTC).
Employment: In 2012 travel and tourism directly supported 1,281,500 jobs–1.8 per cent of total employment. This was expected to rise by 4.4 per cent in 2013 and by 2.9 per cent per annum to 1,785,000 jobs–1.9 per cent of total employment in 2023. This includes employment by hotels, travel agents, airlines and other passenger transportation services (excluding commuter services). It also includes, for example, the activities of the restaurant and leisure industries directly supported by tourists.
In 2012, the total contribution of travel and tourism to employment, including jobs indirectly supported by the industry, was 3.7 per cent of total employment–2,714,500 jobs. This was expected to rise by 4.2 per cent in 2013 to 2,829,500 jobs and by 3.2 per cent per annum to 3,891,000 jobs in 2023.
Visitor exports: Visitor exports generated Taka 7.7 billion (0.4 per cent of total exports) in 2012. This was forecast to grow by 3.2 per cent in 2013, and grow by 4.9 per cent per annum, from 2013-2023, to Taka 12.8bn in 2023.
Investment: Travel and tourism investment in 2012 was Taka 37.3bn, or 1.6 per cent of total investment. It was to rise by 0.5 per cent in 2013, and by 6.0 per cent per annum over the next ten years to Taka 67.4bn in 2023.
The reality: The growth forecast for 2013 and beyond was based on the performances of the past years. But unexpected political development that resulted in unsafe situation hit the industry badly. The overall negative impact of the 2013 situation is going to be felt for long and it is being feared that the impact may push the industry backward significantly.
In the face of almost continuous civil unrest in the form of frequent hartals (general strikes), blockades and random attacks on transportation, helpless tour operators had no alternatives but to cancel most of the bookings. Domestic package and individual travels also fell drastically.
Tour operators were buoyant with the expectation that performance and growth in 2013 would surpass performance and growth of 2012 by a big margin. But civil unrest engulfed entire year and programmes like hartals, road blockades and associated violence, jeopardissed everything.
Taking effects on inbound tours, domestic tours, hotel and restaurants and transportation sectors together, the financial loss has already become huge. It can be safely said that, the budding tourism industry in the country is reeling under the situation, created by civil unrest all over the country and tourism in the country is going through problems of unprecedented nature, in addition to huge financial loss.
Just beginning: It may be recalled that beginning from 1980s, private sector started emerging in the development of tourism industry. Despite various problems and inadequacy of government support private entrepreneurs came forward. In four sub-sectors contribution of private sector needs special mention. These are: tour operation, hospitality or construction of hotel and restaurants, building of resort and theme parks and transportation.
Tour operators are companies that arrange every aspect of a travel package. They bring together all the elements of a trip for travelers or for group of travelers: plane reservations and tickets, hotel arrangements, ground transportation, entertainment and more. All these components are sold together as a package.
Following the footsteps of few pioneers, the number of tour operators has increased. They are handling inbound and outbound tours and some have started selling packages for domestic tourists. Of the total number of tour operators around 10 are now busy handling inbound holiday traffic to Bangladesh. The number of inbound holiday traffic is still negligible compared to neighboring countries, but encouraging fact is—the number was growing and growing at a healthy rate.
Bleak prospect: The precarious nature of the situation came to the fore while talking to prominent and very active tour operators, engaged in handling inbound tourists.
They confirmed that in the tourist generating countries, people are now showing interest in visiting Bangladesh. This new found interest and number of booking received indicated that in 2013 growth in inbound tourism would be more than 30 per cent. Unfortunately, due to civil unrest final result would be far below the expectation and move to negative side.
According to them, 2012 was a good year for inbound tourism. Compared to 2011, the growth in number of holiday or leisure foreign visitors was between 15 and 20 per cent. The growth in domestic tourism was more than 100 per cent.
They said that huge amount of money in foreign exchange has been lost due to booking cancellation. In most cases, booking money deposited in advance had to the returned. There are cases where tour operators concerned had to pay compensation, due to their failure to conduct the tour as per itinerary.
Tough time: It is interesting to note that cancellation of booked trip result in only monetary loss to the tour operator or loss of business, no other trouble. But some operators faced really tough time in handling the foreign tourists who already arrived, because programmes like hartal and road blockade were announced without any prior notice. Moreover, in areas outside Dhaka, while one district was free from hartal the other was not.
In a situation as uncertain as was prevailing in the country in 2013, a number of tour operators of the country displayed a lot of ingenuity in handling their groups of foreign tourists which has already arrived. During hartal period, one operator conducted sight-seeing tour of Dhaka city by rickshaw, instead of tour bus.
There were occasions when tourists groups were stranded in different parts of the country due to disruption of communication. Some were stuck inside the hotel premises with nothing to do. Because of hartal, tour operators were forced to cancel all inter-district trips.
The tourists suffered from this waste of time. Furthermore, tour operators find rescheduling of a trip hard due to limited accommodation facilities in small towns, limited domestic flights and insufficient road connection. So, tour operators are forced to pay compensation.
In a situation like this, it is natural that some tourists would express dissatisfaction. But most damaging is the fact that they carried bad impression and convey to others which is certainly going to harm the interest of tourism in the country already suffering from negative image.
Domestic tourism: Domestic tourism industry suffered heavy losses due to the situation. Cox’s Bazar sea beach and the Sunderbans tours were badly affected.
Around 400 hotels, motels, and guesthouses in Cox’s Bazar, the country’s most attractive tourist destination, witnessed unnatural dearth of guests for almost the whole year. The situation forced them to sit idle most of the days during the peak tourist season.
Shahid Hamid, a prominent hospitality executive said that last year all the hotels had a very good start in the month of January. However, the industry was severely hit due to political unrest starting from February. One event followed another and created a huge void in the hotel industry not only in Dhaka but also to the other prime tourist destinations. Some of the city’s 5 star hotel’s occupancy came down to single digit figure.
Hasan Mansur, a pioneer tour operator in the country expressing grave concern about the situation said that if the civil unrest continues further, the nascent tourism industry in the country will be in very serious crisis.
Mansur said that in his nearly four decades of involvement with tourism industry, he never felt as hopeless as he was in 2013. The loss that the industry suffered in 2013 cannot be recovered in 2014, even if the situation becomes favourable for tourism.
In the tourist generating countries Bangladesh always had bad image—a poor, natural disaster prone improvised country—never a tourist destination. Only recently, this bad notion was beginning to change and slowly but surely Bangladesh was emerging as a tourism destination.
In such a situation, civil unrest associated with hartal and violence of different nature, hit the fledging tourism industry hard—very hard. In a tourist generating country civil unrest is taken more seriously than periodical natural disaster, as safety concern.
(Former Acting Editor of now-defunct The Bangladesh Times, Raquib Siddiqui is a veteran journalist with specialisation in aviation and tourism)
