Development Of Tourism Industry In Bangladesh

Development of Tourism Industry in Bangladesh

Mohammad Shamsuddoha Assistant Professor, Department of Marketing, University of Chittagong, Bangladesh Md. A. Hossain Assistant Professor, Department of Finance, University of Chittagong, Bangladesh Shams E. S. Shahriar Managing Director, FNF Internet Service Provider, Chittagong, Bangladesh T. Chakraborty MBA, University of Chittagong, Bangladesh Abstract: Tourism is world’s largest justifiable service industry that is generating huge revenue for tourist country. Bangladesh has lots of tourism spots but most of them unexplored by the relevant authority. Having all the minimum requirements, the tourism industry could not develop adequately in Bangladesh. The cracks of problem could not identify accurately because of paucity of sufficient number of research and investigations in our country. Out of different problems, the researchers have concentrated their focus to development aspect for tourism sector in Bangladesh. This study will facilitate the decision makers to assess the intensity of the problem and to plan accurate measures to train and develop a good number of manpower for facing the current need readily. This could benefit the tourism industry in multiple ways. This could change the economic picture of tourism sector and contribute a big share in the economy of Bangladesh. Keywords: Tourism, Bangladesh, Development

Introduction Bangladesh is a poor country having lots of potentiality in various sectors. Tourism is one of his potential sectors but it is still unexplored by the decision maker or relevant agency. Her tourist attractions include archeological sites, historic mosques and monuments, resorts, beaches, picnic spots, forest and wildlife. Bangladesh is a riverine country having attractive panoramic beauty. There are hills, vales, deep and mangrove forests, rivers and the longest beach in the world. In this country, the scope of nature based tourism, research based tourism, culture based tourism, and eco-tourism is quite evident (Shamsuddoha M, 2004).Many developing countries have

prepared plans particularly at the central level to guide tourism development, as they have recognized the tourism sector as an important source of foreign currency earning and employment (Cevat Tosun and Dallen J. Timothy, 2001). Bangladesh needs to come out to be several defects in the planning approaches to tourism development. It is quite evident that there is the need for political stability, establishing supportive institutions and decentralization to develop and implement an appropriate contemporary tourism planning approach by taking into account destination specific conditions, and collaboration and cooperation of private, government, and international agency. The marketing experts opine that tourism marketing is the systemic and coordinated efforts to optimize the satisfaction of tourism. The tourism marketing is also supposed to be a device to make a possible reorientation in the business policy and overhaul in the management concept. Tourism planning has been defined as a process based on research and evaluation, which seeks to optimize the potential contribution of tourism to human welfare and environmental quality (Tosun and Jenkins, 1998). Goodall and Bergsma (1990) consider total cost a fifth component, in addition to attractions, facilities/services, accessibility, and image. Destination choice, image, and satisfaction have all been the subject of considerable tourism research (McLellan and Fousher, 1983; Pyo et al., 1989; Selby and Morgan, 1996; Sirakaya et al., 1996). Thus, tourism planning should relate tourism development to the more equitable distribution of wealth that is one of the main aims of national development planning. In this respect, tourism planning is a component of national development planning and strategy. Moreover, it includes a decision- making process between the tourism industry and other sectors of the economy, between various sub- national areas and between types of tourism. It requires the integration of the tourism industry into other sectors such as agriculture, industry, transportation and social services (Timothy, 1999). In view of the aforesaid, facts it is right to mention that tourism is an integrated effort to satisfy tourists by making available to them the best possible services. It is a device to transform the potential tourists into actual tourists. There has been little research to measure the performance levels of tourist industry and small hospitality businesses either as individual organizations or as components of tourist destinations. Here the researchers tried to unearth the real problem behind the development of tourism industry in Bangladesh.

Rationale of the study

In Bangladesh, government is sufferings from earning source to generate more revenue for the smooth mobility of the country. Tourism is one of the sectors; he can manage more earnings from this sector if this sector would be unorganized to organize. Bangladesh is trying to develop its tourism industry to compete in local and global market. Bangladesh needs to develop its tourism industry for local tourists as well as foreign tourist. In Bangladesh, tourism has lot of potentiality to earn more revenue than presently what they are earning. If Governmental agency, private organizations and multinational agency come forward and take the responsibility for developing tourism industry, it will earn much more returns and generate lots of employment as well. There has no plethora research work on tourism industry in Bangladesh perspectives. This research will add some va lue and fill up the gap that motivated the authors to undertake such a study

Objectives of the study In the light of development of tourism industry in Bangladesh particularly, the main objectives of the study are discuss the components for attraction of a tourist spot in Bangladesh. The researcher also tried to give some proforma based process for investors and the beneficiaries from the developed tourism industry in Bangladesh. In developed country, they are doing extensive research on tourism and developing theoretical aspect and technical aspect for further development of tourism industry. Here the researcher tried to expose some ingredients for sake of the development of tourism industry in Bangladesh based on extensive literature review.

Scope and Methodologies of the study The study covered various Government and non-governmental organization who are acting vital role in developing tourism industry in Bangladesh. The sample comprised more than ten Governmental and non-governmental institutes those who are working with the development of tourism in Bangladesh. Necessary information and data has been collected from the officials of those organizations through the direct interview method by using structured questionnaire. In addition, review all the tourism related websites for updated information. In total 50 officials have been interviewed during the study period for official information and 120 domestic tourists have been interviewed for unearthing the most demandable facilities regarding tourism industry. In the other hand, the researcher also reviews several foreign and local research works as well in this field.

Limitations of the study The study covered very limited number of sample organizations in respect of its real scope all over the country. There is no plethora of research work in Bangladesh context in this field. Sometimes respondent were not interested to express to their honest opinion. To overcome these limitations, an exhaustive study of existing literature in this field, foreign journal, relevant publication by Government and other private agencies were studied. This is fully self- financed research work that is why the researcher could not able to cover wider area.

Analysis of Findings A. Components for attraction of a tourist spot This is very evident that attraction, infrastructures, facilities, hospitality, cost are the five factors which can develop a tourist industry. The following lists show components of tourist destination attractiveness, compiled through five factors , which were literature reviews regarding tourist destination choice, image and tourist satisfaction.

Attractions Facilities and services

In a straight line or circuitously, a tourism business plays a vigorous role in providing almost all the tangible and intangible components of attractiveness identified in the lists shown above. Hence, these sorts of changes can contribute considerably to visitor pleasure/displeasure and to tourist perceptions and images of destinations. Every agency takes care of these five factors due to customer satisfaction. The researchers have conducted a study over domestic tourist regarding finding the answer of what are the top five facilities are most demandable by the sample respondents.

Table 2 shows that there is no specific demand regarding tourism industry, it is a combined demand of the customer view points which are related with Communication facilities, Accommodation facilities, Reasonable cost charges, Security facilities, and Sight seeing facilities. The top most demand by the domestic tourist is the security. All the respondents feel that security should be ensured by the tourism authority.

The total exceeds 100+ because respondents are choosing more than one answers from the structured questionnaire. The study reveal that the authority should ensures sight seeing facilities and communication facilities should be develop and every tourist is ready to pay even more if the facilities.

B. Benchmarking in the Tourism industry Benchmarking is the process of determining who is the very best, who sets the standard, and what that standard is. In baseball, you could argue that seven consecutive World Series Championships made the New York Yankees the benchmark (www.Business.com). If

Bangladesh can set the benchmarking of tourism industry, then they can able to evaluate the performance of the industry. Given the volatility in the small hospitality sector, it may be that those small businesses, which could most, benefit from benchmarking are the very ones that lack the resources and inclination to carry it out (Micklewright, 1993). In any case, the benchmarking of small organizations against one another is unlikely to make a real impact on destination image and tourist satisfaction. The following list identifies some of the critical performance areas in which classification and grading schemes lay down standards to be achieved in tourism industry in Bangladesh.

It is also significant that the limited examples of benchmarking carried out among small tourism businesses have almost all been carried out by external third parties (Coker, 1996; Department of National Heritage, 1996; Johns et al. , 1996; Johns et al. , 1997). The above performance is key factors to determine the benchmarking of the tourism industry.

Figure 1 shows that there is a flow of factors for decision makers , process for investors, performance for tourist industry and the ultimate result. There should have some factors, which have internal, and external factors and procedures is always development oriented. In this process stage, the authority or relevant authority should measure the graph of development. Organizations need to achieve an overall level of performance in order to be get competitive advantage. All these activities and process can be accepted as benchmarks indicating how businesses perform against various standards. In principle, they make it possible to improve both systems and service outputs on an ongoing basis. In order to benefit from external benchmarking, small tourism businesses must be motivated to reflect and examine. Finally, all the activities carry to the results, which maintain the development of tourist industry and sustainable development on tourism industry in Bangladesh.

C. Performance of Tourism Industry

Concluding Remarks It is possible to sketch some wide -ranging conclusions that take the figure of policy recommendations and a set of related lessons for why modern planning approaches to tourism development have not been implemented and why these defects in planning approaches to tourism development have emerged in Bangladesh. First, current defects in planning approaches to tourism development are an extension of prevailing shortcomings of public administration systems, political cultures, over-politicized states, and lack of developmental approaches to national development. That is to say, the roots of an ill-planned approach to tourism development are a reflection of the existing sophisticated socio-political and economic system that shaped planning approaches to tourism development. As Tosun and Jenkins (1998, p. 111) argued: The choice of approach to planning assignments will be conditioned by many factors.

Perhaps the predominant factors will be related to the stage of political and economic development in the particular country. Tourism planning team or the national planning organization cannot develop and implement a better planning approach to tourism development themselves unless some desirable changes in this macro system take place. This may mirror the popular assertion that tourism does not bring development, rather development brings tourism. Second, political instability appears to be one of the main obstacles to implementation of continuous planning activity and consistency of tourism policy. There are too many bureaucratic old approach to planning has been replaced with a new approach to planning, which is called the ``contemporary approach’’ that involves flexible, continuous, comprehensive, integrative, participatory and system planning models. These components of the contemporary approach are not necessarily exclusive; rather they overlap each other. Therefore, Bangladesh should develop an appropriate method of planning by using the right promotional mix and proportion of components of the contemporary approach, taking into account their own circumstances. Finally, the efficiency and effectiveness of contemporary approaches to tourism planning largely depend on the pattern of power distribution in developing countries. Centralized public administration systems make the implementation of conte mporary approaches to tourism planning difficult. There are some other recommendations is that pricing should be reasonable, extensive promotional activities in domestic and foreign markets, starting the tourism educations, buildup tourism professionals through training and development works, increase private investment and should welcome to the foreign investors. If all the recommendations and process follow by

tourism administrator or agency then only Bangladesh can able to maintain the growth of development of tourism industry and its sustainable development.

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