Introduction
Tourism policy provides an overall guideline within which a destination ’s tourism typically operates. It can be defined as “a set of regulations, rules, guideline, directives, and development /promotion objectives and strategies that provide a framework, which directly affects long term tourism development affecting collective and individual decisions” (Goeldner and Ritchie 2009: p.414). The inevitability of tourism policy in the realization of tourism benefits is overwhelming. A national-level tourism policy accordingly provides a direction for future tourism development in a country. This chapter explores and gives an overview of the National Tourism Policy (NTP) of Bangladesh. In so doing, a qualitative research approach has been utilized that eventually guide the data collection and data analysis methods.
Bangladesh economy has made momentous improvement in macroeconomic indicators in decade. Acceleration of economic growth, decline in budget deficit, high rate of export and import growth, in surge of remittances, increase in per capita GDP are some major achievements that Bangladesh attained in last few years. Like the inflow of remittances, receipts from tourism can be a major source of export earnings. Importantly, it creates demand effects for a range of domestic goods and services and thereby contributes to the total employment and the GDP of the economy. While the direct measure of tourism is captured through the travel receipts in the service account of the balance of payments, the indirect measures of tourism is accounted in the form of employment in transport, hotels, restaurants, and trade activities and tourists’ spending on travel, hotels, food, and other purchases of local goods and services. While all activities have forward and backward linkages, tourism is particularly potent source of forward and backward linkages unleashing a lot of derived demand activities. Consequently, tourism can be a major source of growth and employment in a developing economy like Bangladesh.
In order to guide the tourism development, Bangladesh government has formulated and adopted the “National Tourism Policy-2010” with some major changes based on the previous policy of 1992. The updated tourism policy is generally viewed as a comprehensive outline with goals, objectives, policy instruments, implementation programmes, and evaluation tactics. The NTP of Bangladesh has 30 objectives and goals with concise action plans. In addition to highlighting the NTP , this chapter also identifies how government positioned ‘Tourism’ in the five-year plans and goes beyond, on a limited scale, to find out some root causes that act as obstacles to the effectiveness of current policy .
Tourism Development in Bangladesh: Areas of Concentration
Bangladesh is blessed with versatile natural beauties ranging from mountains to rivers to beaches to bio-diversity and from ancient archaeological sites to medieval monasteries, temples, pagodas, mosques and churches. It boasts the three UNESCO heritage sites such as historic mosque at Bagerhat, Ruins of Buddisht Bihara at Paharpur, and Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in the world at Khulna division. Despite such auspicious tourism resources, the tourism industry is far from thriving. In fiscal year 2018, tourism accounted for a 2.2% of direct contribution to Global Domestic product (GDP) for Bangladesh, whereas the global contribution was 10.4% and that of South Asia remained 3.6% (World travel and Tourism Council 2018). When the global tourists’ movement reached 1.363 billion in 2017, Bangladesh received only 1.026 million (The World Bank 2019) with an increase of 23.61% over the year 2016 (Knoema 2019). The statistics leave simply an implication that, the potential for utilizing tourism as an instrument for augmenting economic growth and sector-specific contribution to overall economy is noteworthy. However, from an international perspective, tourism in Bangladesh is at an emerging stage.
Considering the availability of tourism resources, the following sub-sections outline possible key categories of tourism development for Bangladesh along with the observations for future development . The background paper on tourism sector for the 7th five-year plan identified seven categories of tourism including site, business, office, education , religious, medical, and others (Khondker and Ahsan 2015). In this chapter, the following six broad categories (to some extent interlinked) have been identified more specifically in light of the Chapter 3 of Bangladesh Tourism Policy 2010 (Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism 2010). It is thus believed that development of Bangladesh tourism requires policy influences in each category of tourism being discussed here.
Sea Beach and Marine Tourism Development
The longest (unbroken) sea beach- Cox’s Bazar, the Daughter of Sea- Kuakata, Teknaf sea beach, Saintmartins, Sonadia island, and other coastal areas are targeted to create impact through tourism (Hassan et al. 2013; Hossain and Wadood 2020). In order to engage tourists, various activities in these destinations can be designed and offered such as coastal sports like football/volleyball, surfing, etc. Although a scenic marine drive has been constructed from Cox’s Bazar to Teknaf, lack of tourist-friendly vehicles discourages tourists to explore the drive.
Forest-Based Tourism Development
There is notable opportunity exist to develop forest-based tourism in Bangladesh in which Sundarbans remain an ideal case (Hoque et al. 2018). For sustainable eco-tourism development in forest areas, coordination with Ministry of Environment and Forest is must, which is equally highlighted in the broader policy instrument. However, it has been claimed widely that poor infrastructures, lack of engagement and empowerment of the local (destination ) communities, corrupt practices by powerful individuals and/or businesspersons, and limited support from the public bodies create the real challenge for tourism development in forest areas (Alam et al. 2010; Hoque et al. 2018).
Riverine and Rural Tourism Development
Bangladesh is the world’s largest Delta-island with numerous rivers. Although the actual numbers of river remain contested, Water Resources Planning Organisation’s (WARPO) land-use types for National Water Management Plan identified that the total river area will cover 8% of the entire land area of Bangladesh in 2025 (Water Resources Planning Organisation 2001: p.16). These rivers are again spread over rural-dominated regions all over the country. This is particularly significant given the fact that there are in total 86,038 villages in Bangladesh (Daily Sun 2017). The river-routes and riverine beauties along with lifestyles of rural people, their way of living, events, traditions, culture, cuisine, and crafts have unique appeals to tourists (Rahman et al. 2018). Thus, there is immense potential for “riverine” and “rural” tourism in Bangladesh.
Cultural Tourism Development
Culture is indeed a broader expression that essentially includes what we have and what we are proud of; in that it encapsulates archaeology, history, religion, heritage, and so on. Thus, cultural tourism may cover observation of a historical day or festival such as “Pahela Baishakh” (Rahman 2012). Apart from these, lifestyles of different ethnic groups in Chittagong Hill Tracts, Mymensingh, Sylhet, and Rajshahi also provide a strong segment for attracting tourists (Das and Chakraborty 2012). As a sub-set of cultural tourism, different archaeological and historical establishments can be considered as “attractions” in tourism such as “Lalbagh Fort” and “Central Shahid Minar” in Dhaka (Hassan et al. 2013; Roy and Roy 2015).
Bangladesh hosts different religious groups with a majority of Muslims. Each religious group has its own rituals and way of celebrations, which themselves cater sources of “activities” as well as “attractions” for tourism development in the country. For example, the world’s second largest Muslim congregation happens in Tongi, near Dhaka city as “Bishwa Ijtema” where near around half a million people gathers from different parts of the world (Fahim and Dooty 2014). Large gatherings also happen for religious events observed by Hindus (e.g. Durga Puja), Christians (e.g. Christmas Day), and Buddhist (e.g. Buddha Purnima). Beside such events, there are different sorts of structure available in Bangladesh, which can be utilized for tourism development such as “Mazar of Sufis’, Trail of Ibn-e-batuta, Trail of Samrat Ashokh, Adinath temple in Maheskhali, Chandranath temple in Sitakunda, Golden temple in Bandarban, Kantajir temple in Dinajpur etc. However, lack of suitable infrastructure to connect different but relevant sites of religious significance and amenities to serve tourists or visitors satisfactorily made the tourism development tasks challenging.
Community-Based Tourism Development
In tourism system, perhaps destination community is the most readily affected stakeholder segment and without considering and involving them in tourism development, it would merely impossible to achieve the goal (Simmons 1994). In addition, tourism attractions can be preserved and protected while ensuring security is possible with the help of local community. In this regard, the National Tourism Policy highlights “community host-stay” operation through the multi stakeholder involvement including local government.
Miscellaneous
Beside the above-mentioned categories, business tourism has immense potential in the urban centres of the country such as MICE (Meeting, Incentive, Conference and Event) tourism (Das and Chakraborty 2012). Another developing segment can be given due attention as “Medical Tourism“(Hassan et al. 2015; Mamun and Andaleeb 2013). Last but not at the least sports can play a significant role in Bangladesh tourism with a specific reference to some popular sports such as cricket.
Methodology
A qualitative research methodology has guided overall discussion in this chapter. The research methodology guides the research methods to gather and analyze the data (Crotty 1998). Given the objective of this chapter to provide an overview of tourism policy for Bangladesh tourism, data have been collected using secondary techniques. A desk-based literature review has been conducted to assemble a wide range of published documents from the academia and practitioner fields. Besides academic articles, a broad range of “grey literature” (primarily focusing government- and internet-sourced documents) was compiled and analyzed to derive the conclusion. To analyse the collected data, a “document analysis” technique has been employed. Under such a technique, the process of analysis involves “finding, selecting, appraising (making sense of), and synthesising data contained in documents” (Bowen 2009: p.28).
An Overview of National Tourism Policy (NTP) in Bangladesh
Bangladesh government has persuaded several policies and legislations for the development of the tourism sector. However, before 1992, Bangladesh had no official tourism policy , rather a Strategic Master Plan for tourism development was appropriated by the government in 1990 and prepared jointly by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). In 1992, the government formulated the first set of tourism policies. Continuing with the process and to reap the benefit of growing demand in global tourism, the government adopted an updated tourism policy in December 2009, which was effected from the subsequent year and named as National Tourism Policy-2010 (Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism 2010).
The NTP has six chapters in total and developed in Bengali. The first chapter provides a brief background and rationale of tourism in Bangladesh. The document acknowledges that although there is immense potential for tourism development (as discussed above), Bangladesh largely fails to reap the benefits and still remains at a very early stage of development .
Key goals and objectives highlighted in NTP
No. | Key goals and objectives of NTP |
|---|---|
To formulate national, regional and area wise master plan to develop the tourism industry with long term, medium term and short-term action plan and tactics | |
To include the tourism development plans within the national development strategies, policies and programs within a sustainability perspective and thus create high quality, viable environment | |
To closely trace global trends and demands and classify the tourism attractions, build up plans to promote them | |
To alleviate poverty by generating employment opportunities in tourism industry and confirm the tourism share in national income | |
To encourage active involvement of private sector in the form of investment along with government, in tourism infrastructure and transportation projects | |
To implement and update the contemporary rules and regulations to confirm the tourism attractions and services, and tourist safety | |
To create space for national and international investment in tourism industry; simplify the loan facility and tax exemption policy | |
To attract domestic and international tourists by proper promotions and marketing, especially by declaring restricted tourism area and exclusive tourist zone for international tourist | |
To ensure that appropriate governance mechanisms are used, in which central and local government and civil actors can collaborate and cooperate in decision making process | |
To use tourism as an effective tool for fostering social and economic development of backward regions, disadvantages groups and indigenous locality | |
To ensure integration of various types of tourism specific region or locality, thus establish tourism cities with focus on alternative tourism (rural tourism, boat tourism, agricultural tourism, health tourism, sports tourism, community tourism and so on) | |
To support social and economic objectives of the government with tourism development while maintaining sustainable environment policies | |
To create professional human resources with instructional courses on tourism and to enforce the efficacy of those courses through proper certification | |
To intensify the benefits from tourism, interdisciplinary research-based development planning is inevitable | |
To ensure the IT usage in tourism sector and the availability of tourism data | |
To facilitate the competitiveness of the tourism sector through the creation of regional tourism souvenirs | |
To strengthen international cooperation through Bangladeshi missions in foreign countries with proper and distinctive duties, along with regional and sub-regional authority like SAARC and BIMSTEC | |
To enhance communication and collaboration with international tourism organization, such as, UNWTO and try to be more integrated with them |
The third chapter explores different key facets of the Tourism Policy and emphasizes different types of tourism while considering destination resource realities. It has been claimed here that “tourism and hospitality industry” must have been declared as a prioritized industry and sanctioned sufficient budget for development goals. Alongside the public investment, private sectors’ encouragement and involvement as partners is equally underscored for the implementation of development plans such as preservation, upgradation, and promotion of tourism resources (e.g. training of human resources for skilled manpower). The chapter also highlights inter-ministerial coordination and diversification of markets.
Different levels and layers of policy governance (source: developed by the authors)
In terms of governance of the tourism policy , Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism is the main responsible ministry while Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation (BPC) and Bangladesh Tourism Board (BTB) are the government agencies to further implanting the policies. Keeping aside these organizations, four national level committees and one (form of) regional and local level committee are evident towards coordinating development initiatives. The upper two committees of National Tourism Council and Tourism Cabinet Committee are headed by the Hon’ble Prime Minister while tourism minister is in charge of the Tourism Advisory Committee. Secretary of Civil Aviation and Tourism Ministry typically supervises the inter-ministerial affairs, which is a key operational criterion due to the fragmented and interconnected nature of tourism and hospitality industry. Under the authority of Deputy Commissioners (DCs), district (region) and/or local level tourism is supposed to be governed. In this connection, a separate ‘tourism cell’ must exist at each DC office. Apart from these conventional structures, Ambassadors working in various countries are expected to play the role concerning marketing and promotion of tourism attractions in Bangladesh.
Chapter Five generalises initiatives for implementing the NTP . This chapter in general extends and to some extent repeats the ideas echoed in previous chapters. The final chapter underlines different activities with a particular emphasis on marketing and promotion . The ultimate need for a master plan is accentuated and destination branding initiatives are encouraged. In addition, critical requirement of specialized and skilled human resources is well-observed along with the necessity to involve educational and training institutions to achieve this goal. Furthermore, tourism and hospitality related research works are highly encouraged though there is no direction provided for funding of such research endeavours.
Positioning Tourism in Five-Year Plans of Bangladesh
Bangladesh government starts paying attention on the development of tourism industry before the inception of the national tourism policy in 2009. Tourism started to take place in the five-year plan from the fifth five-year plan (FY1997-FY2002). Before that, there was negligible notation of tourism. In the fifth five-year plan, it was mentioned that BPC will take extensive programs for promoting Bangladesh as a tourist destination and try to attract FDI for the development of tourism infrastructure (Planning Division, n.d.). In order to promote tourism, private sectors shall be given high priority in the development of integrated facilities such as hotels and other physical attractions. In the sixth five-year plan (FY2011-FY2015), government emphasized few steps to promote tourism in which at least 15 protected areas and ecologically endangered areas were identified to promote conservation of biodiversity and eco-tourism (General Economics Division 2011). In addition, the government was very keen to strengthen private investment in tourism industry to develop sustainable tourist facilities in Rangamati, Bandarban, Khagrachari, Cox’s Bazar, Sylhet and Kuakata.
Ongoing tourism expansion initiatives
Medium term strategic objectives | Activities | Implementing departments/agencies |
|---|---|---|
Safety and security of tourists | Upgrading security forces through new intakes and training | Ministry of Home Affairs |
Safe and secure aviation system | Upgrading Hazrat Shahjalal International airport | Civil Aviation Authority |
Construction of Civil Aviation Authority’s Head office | ||
Infrastructural development of the existing airports and construction of a new international airport | ||
Expansion of Tourism | Identifying potential tourism spots scattered over different places of the country and modernizing and expanding the existing one | Bangladesh Tourism Board |
Involving local government institutions in tourism activities | ||
Creating infrastructure and improving management of the tourism of the tourism industry through Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements | ||
Producing documentary films on Bangladesh Tourism and publicizing tourism events | ||
Procurement of water vessels and Tourist coach for package tour | ||
Maintaining tourism related training courses and establishing 4 more tourist centers | ||
Participating in tourism fairs organized home and abroad and arranged related programs | ||
Preparation of short term, mid-term and long-term tourist master plan for the country for guiding development activities for tourism | ||
Visit Bangladesh Campaign for development and promotion of tourism | ||
Capacity building inn tourism sector |
Strategies for strengthening Bangladesh tourism
Field | Strategy |
|---|---|
Planning | To exhibit a planning approach that supports economic growth while maintaining socio-cultural norms and fairly reflects the principle of sustainable tourism. |
Investment | To boost investment by designing incentive schemes that would attract foreign investors, depending upon the need, incentives like credit facilities and tax incentives may be considered |
Public private partnership | To implement the tourism strategy a strong public-private partnership is imperative. Government role is to provide investment in fixed infrastructure while much of the investment in tourism facilities and services will have to come from the private sectors |
Organization | To achieve institutionalization through associations at national, regional and local levels with the context of good governance, to coordinate among the ministries which are in one or other ways related to tourism, to ensure full and active participation of all related public and private entities, stake holders such as ATAB, TOAB and NGOs in relevant decision making process |
Domestic tourism | To provide tourism products at acceptable quality and affordable prices to various groups of the society |
International tourist | To attract foreign tourists, identify the tourist generating countries, simplifying the visa requirements, establish exclusive foreign tourist zones, ensuring the safety, security and services to the tourist |
Research and Development | To ensure research and development in effective planning tourism policies |
Transportation and infrastructure | To eliminate transportation and infrastructural problems in popular, fastest growing and remote tourism centers |
Aviation | To explore the pairing arrangement between Bangladesh Biman and a reputed airline for facilitating the domestic career to be competitive |
Marketing and promotion | To commence with marketing and promotional activities for each destination with the objective of branding on an international, regional, national and local level |
Education | To set up tertiary education program in education which would yield effective skilled labor and human capital in the industry |
One stop service | To facilitate domestic and foreign tourists with one stop service rendering the necessary information and services |
Branding | To establish Bangladesh as one Destination brand by managing the cultural and natural heritage and thereby convert them into a point of attractions to the tourists by using the logo |
Diversification | To develop means for alternative tourism particularly by agricultural, rural, health, medical, sport tourism activities |
Tourism zones | To use tourism as a key tool for development, areas adjacent to international airports to be declare as tourist village, naturally attractive areas which are yet to be developed should be given priority with flexible investment regulations |
Eco tourism and biodiversity | To ensure environmental sustainability carrying capacity of each destination to be calculated, depending on the nature of the destination, class or mass tourism to be identified |
Regional integration | To promote intra-regional tourism, integrated tourism activities to be chalked down with SAARC and BIMSTEC |
Association with international organization | To reap benefit from the association with the international organizations, for example UNWTO, twinning arrangements and joint ventures are crucial |
Miscellaneous | To modernized the tourism services and ultimate tourist safety, by establishing quality Tourism service (QTS), automated tailor machine (ATM) and Tourism satellite account (TSA) |
When the strategies are generally evaluated, legislative efficacy to ensure services and safety to tourists, improvement of the existing tourism areas as well as new areas with sufficient resources, taking more concrete steps in coordination among the institutions, taking necessary precautions for the development of domestic tourism and carrying out planned domestic, foreign investment come into prominence. One of the biggest challenges of reaching the targets is the need for collaboration and coordination among the many types and sectors of industries that are related to tourism industry, directly or indirectly.
National Tourism Policy: A Way Forward
This chapter is aimed at providing a brief overview of tourism policy for the development of Bangladesh tourism rather incorporating a critical discussion. Still, a few issues have been brought here that might be helpful for tourism policy-makers in Bangladesh at any future endeavors.
Tourism policy outcomes are highly determined by factors outside the tourism policy systems as well as factors inside the tourism policy systems along with the policy process itself (Airey and Ruhanen 2014). In one hand, policy inputs incorporated policy factors that emerge from outside the tourism policy systems. It can be ranges from change in exchange rate, consumer protection, environmental damages, changes in laws, political instability, and so on. On the other hand, policy inputs come from the tourism sector itself, for example, relative strength of different stakeholders in the industry environment, seasonality associated with tourism demand, and the like. These inputs come into the policy process in which policy makers learn about and interpret the inputs. This in turn renders the policy output in the form of policy statement from the government and actual outcomes of the policy decisions in the form of increased visitor numbers or spending, which is the ultimate goal of the tourism policy .
Tourism policy-makers and policy planners in Bangladesh however seem reluctant to identify the policy inputs both from the outside and inside the tourism industry. Tourism industry needs assistance from other relevant industries for its smooth functioning. Thus, policy factors from the other sectors are inevitable. The lack of proper coordination among the industries and their respective ministries is mounting. Tourism policies need to be acquainted with the relevant data within the industry for the relevance and effectiveness of the tourism policy . In the absence of these informational factors, tourism policy would fail to provide effective insights and thereby incapable of predicting the future scenarios of both global and national tourism.
In a more comprehend term, policymakers must consider 10 A’s while developing tourism policy and eager to visualize policy outcomes such as sustainable tourism development and makes a place marketable (Rahman and Shahid 2012). The 10 A’s are: attractions, activities, accommodation, amenities, affinities, abilities, administrations, acts, actors, and accesses. All these factors must be consulted in policy and plan formulation and implementation while taking ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ criteria in due considerations. It is easily perceived that tourism development at a destination (highlighting attractions, activities, accommodation, and amenities) has significant impact on the targeted areas, especially on the respective local population and the environment (actors). Therefore, any policy aimed at developing those destinations should identify the negative effects that tourism activities can create and how to lessen the negative impacts, at the same time enhance the positive traits from those activities (affinities). Towards a policy decision-making process, one primary choice for the tourism policy-makers is how to involve government (administration , acts, and actors) in the development of tourism. Options can range from complete government ownership to non-government involvement in the process of decision-making and subsequent implementations of tourism affairs. In between these two extremes, there are a wide variety of mixtures of public-private cooperation that can be consulted as well. The process of policy formulation at the national levels requires the distinction in the policy for domestic tourists and international tourists (actors). It has been always a debatable issue whether to allocate the scarce tourism resources to domestic tourists or international tourists (access).
A sound policy always requires a research base on which public policy is formulated. However, depth research cannot be feasible if there is lack of funding to conduct. In Bangladesh, the funding for research is scant in its capacity. Tourism policies and plan that are not supported by empirical evidence and supported by a government and political will can only lead to misperception and intricacies (Fayos-Solá 1996; Hassan and Burns 2014), which is the current scenario of tourism policy in Bangladesh.
Conclusion
Although Bangladesh has immense potential for tourism development given the resource realities at destinations, the country largely fails to harness the benefits. On this note, this chapter provides an overview of the tourism policy in Bangladesh and identifies that tourism policy is unavoidable for effective functioning of a destination . The NTP of Bangladesh has six chapters, which are briefly summarized in the discussion. Tourism development focus was also recognized by the government by placing it in the five-year comprehensive plans. However, nothing helped the country so far to optimize benefits from tourism and it still remains at the early stage of development . In this connection, ignoring the broader ‘inside’ and “outside” policy factors and “inclusive” policy decision-making process have been detracting policy outcomes. Finally, the long run policy formulation should be based on proper research and development of the industry with a primary focus of ensuring that future generations are not discounted in the process of present consumptions. The findings of this chapter are expected to be helpful for future policy-makers in Bangladesh to find out different loopholes in the existing policy and get focused more robustly into various factors that essentially may take a toll on the effectiveness of tourism policy .