Tour operators, hotels and airlines fear huge losses
The tourism industry is set to face another blow due to the call for a two-day shutdown just after the Eid holidays as a huge number of tourists have cancelled their bookings at hotels and resorts across the country.
“We receive the highest number of tourists during the Eid vacation. But the announcement of the shutdowns has ruined our expectation,” said Omar Sultan, president of Cox’s Bazar Hotel-Motel and Guest House Owners Association.
Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh had called hartal for August 12-13 to protest against a High Court verdict that cancelled its registration with the Election Commission. The party later deferred the 48-hour shutdown programme by a day, pushing the holidaymakers to struggle again to reschedule their tour plans.
A huge number of local tourists visit Cox’s Bazar, Rangamati, Bandarban and the Sundarbans during the Eid vacation.
But tour operators and hoteliers fear huge losses this time.
Around 70 percent of the bookings in different hotels, motels and guest houses in Cox’s Bazar for celebrating the Eid holidays have been cancelled due to the shutdown, Sultan said.
There are around 14,000 rooms, including 1,790 in 11 hotels and 8,750 in 175 guesthouses, in Cox’s Bazar, according to industry insiders.
“The tourism sector has been going through tough times,” said Taufiq Uddin Ahmed, the newly elected president of Tour Operators Association of Bangladesh.
“The fear of severe political unrest in the run up to the next general elections has resulted in uncertainties in the industry,” he said.
Dilapidated roads, especially on the Dhaka-Cox’s Bazar route, and frequent hartals have significantly affected domestic tourism, Ahmed said.
Green Holidays Tours, which arranges tours of Cox’s Bazar, Rangamati and Bandarban, had bookings from around 150 tourists after Eid. But all the bookings were cancelled due to the hartal and the ongoing tribal unrest in Khagrachhari, said Md Borhan Uddin, the company’s chief executive officer.
His company is likely to incur losses of around Tk 15 lakh due to the tour cancellation, Borhan said.
“Rescheduling will also create hassles for us, said Masud Hossain, executive director of Bengal Tours, a leading inbound tour operator.
Around 65 people, including 20 foreign guests, were scheduled to visit the Sundarbans after Eid. “We had rescheduled the tours considering the hartal on August 12-13. But we are in a fix now as the shutdowns were put back by a day,” Hossain said.
Syed G Qadir, general manager of Galaxy Holidays, another inbound tour operator, said the number of prospective tourists would fall in the next six months amid political turbulence. Around 50 tourists, who booked hotels in Cox’s Bazar by Galaxy Holidays, have cancelled their tours due to the post-Eid shutdowns, he said.
Hoteliers also said they had a plan to recover the previous losses through the upcoming Eid vacation, but the sudden shutdowns have dealt a fresh blow to them.
“We have 276 rooms in our hotel and nearly 90 percent of the rooms were booked for August 11-15. But after the hartal was called, nearly 30 percent of the bookings were cancelled,” said Mohiuddin Khan Khokon, director for sales and marketing at Hotel The Cox Today, a luxury hotel in the beach city.
His hotel earns more than Tk 10 lakh a day as room tariff if all the rooms are occupied, Khokon said.
Nearly 1.5 lakh tourists come to the beach city everyday during the Eid vacation, but the number may fall to 25,000 this time, said Sultan of Cox’s Bazar Hotel-Motel and Guest House Owners Association.
Cox’s Bazar has around 350 hotels, motels and guest houses, and the owners have so far laid off around 5,000 staff members due to a dull business amid the ongoing political unrest, Sultan said.
Airlines that operate flights on the Dhaka-Cox’s Bazar route are also suffering due to the announcement of the shutdowns as they have to refund ticket money.
“We will have to refund 30-40 percent of the money due to the hartal,” said Mofizur Rahman, managing director of Novoair, a new operator on the domestic route.
The airline has already shelved its plan to operate an extra flight on the Dhaka-Cox’s Bazar route because of a low demand, according to Rahman.
Foreign tourist arrivals have declined significantly in recent times. Around 1.12 lakh foreign tourists visited Bangladesh during the January-May period this year, which was more than 2.25 lakh in the same period last year, according to the immigration department of police.
The travel and tourism sector raked in Tk 18,250 crore, about 2.2 percent of the gross domestic product of the country, in 2011.
-With The Daily Star input
