Majhar Mannan :
Due to the corona epidemic in the last two years, the people of the country have not been able to visit the tourist destinations and they have not been able to travel. Educational institutions are usually closed in December and due to the favorable weather conditions, tourists are eager to visit the tourist spots and they want to travel there with ease.
A large number of tourists flocked to Cox’s Bazar in December this year, and those involved in tourism there have doubled, tripled and even quadrupled the cost of the hotel, including food, which again puts the tourism business in the face of sharp criticism. Tourists have many complaints about the country’s tourism industry and its tourist centers, and the country’s tourism industry is not yet prosperous in that sense. If tourists are harassed step by step in tourist centers, they will no longer be interested in going there, which may further delay the country’s tourism industry.
The tourism sector, on the one hand, has the limitation of new financing, on the other hand, infrastructural weaknesses and, at the same time, the acute lack of proper planning, which prevents the tourism industry from moving forward in that way. The first thing that is needed to develop the tourism industry is to improve the communication system and eliminate the anarchy in the transport sector. Due to extreme mismanagement on the highways of Bangladesh, there are constant traffic jams due to which tourists have to spend hours on the roads. When tourists arrive at tourist destinations after suffering a lot, they still do not find a beautiful environment there because the people associated with tourism abuse them and those who have to buy everything at high prices do not even get full cooperation and support. Bangladesh has very few tourist centers where women can roam freely but there are many tourist spots where tourists are not interested in taking women.
According to the Bangladesh Tourism Board, about 4 million people are involved in this tourism business and 1.5 crore people are directly or indirectly dependent on this tourism business and their livelihood depends on it. But in the last two years, due to the corona epidemic, the tourism sector has lost about Tk 15,000 crore and a huge number of people have become unemployed. And because of this, the tourism industry has lagged far behind, but with the decline of the Corona, the sector has begun to regain its vitality. But the people associated with the tourist centers are taking the tourists hostage and extorting money by trickery and deceit is not desirable at all and it must be strictly controlled and the government must take exemplary initiative in this regard. We all hope that the country’s tourism industry will be more prosperous and play an important role in the country’s economy and that the people involved in tourism will be much better. In order to develop the tourism industry, it is necessary to increase the budget allocation, improve the communication system and develop the infrastructure in the tourist centers and at the same time change the mentality of the people living around those.
(The writer is Assistant Professor, B A F Shaheen College Kurmitola, Dhaka Cantonment).
