Bangladesh pavilion in the four-day Korea World Travel Fair, which began on Thursday in South Korean capital Seoul, drew huge crowd of visitors on its second day on Friday.
An increased assembly of tour operators from across the world was seen inquisitive at the pavilion to know about Bangladesh’s tourism and hospitality industry.Forty-nine countries are displaying their respective natural beauties and archaeological sites to welcome world tourists and travellers.
Seven tour operators — Journey Plus, Escape Bangladesh Ltd, Blue Sky Holidays, Riverain Tours, ANNEX Travel and Consulting Group, Creative Tours and Travels and Autarky Tours Bangladesh — are participating in the show at Coex Exhibition Centre.
Bangladesh Tourism Board, the National Tourism Organisation run under the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism, for the second time, took a pavilion of the fair with an aim to present Bangladesh as an attractive tourist destination in the world.
Journey Plus chief executive officer Taufiq Rahman told the news agency that he had successful meeting with Bhutanese and Indonesian counterparts about in bound tourism.
Citing Korean tourism promotion, Taufiq said as part of aggressive tourism promotion, it (Korea) brought kindergarten kids who went round different pavilions of the show so that the kids can get an idea about their tourism industry from their childhood.
He said since Bangladesh is a new destination for Koreans, we should appoint some Korean based PR companies whose primary job would be to introduce Bangladesh and its primary potential tourism products to the Korean market.
Syed Mahbubul Islam Bulu, chief executive officer of Riverain Tours, said some visitors had shown keen interest to visit Bangladesh to see second largest Muslims congregation Biswa Ijtema.
Visitors also expressed their willingness to attend religious festivals of Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Buddhists, said Bulu.
Bangladesh’s tourism campaign is less compared to any other countries in the world despite immense tourism destinations, he said and suggested that Bangladesh launch aggressive campaign to give a big boost to the growing tourism and hospitality industry.
Citing potential of tourism industry, he said Bangladesh could take one third of its national budget from the tourism industry if the industry is nurtured properly.
Our foreign embassies should be very cooperative with tour operators Wasiuddin Al Mashud, chief executive officer of ANNEX Group, said most of the Bangladesh embassies don’t have any updated data about Bangladesh tourism, culture and heritage.
Foreign embassies should have travel desk to cooperate with foreign tourists to grow the tourism industry, he said.
‘High ups of Bangladesh government seem to be more interested to promote tourism but slack activities of the tourism ministry and insufficient manpower of the Bangladesh Tourism Board are behind the bar to flourish the potential industry,’ he pointed out.
-With New Age input
