Bangladesh's ranking in tourism appreciable

It is heartening to note that Bangladesh has been ranked seventh in the Lonely Planet's—the world's largest travel guidebook publisher—top 10 "Best value" travel destinations for 2019. According to them, Bangladesh has a lot to offer given that it has many exciting and diverse tourist destinations that are also very affordable. Cox's Bazaar, the world's longest sea beach; the Sundarbans—the world's largest mangrove forest; Saint Martin's Island—a small island in the Bay of Bengal and Unesco World Heritage Sites such as the historic city of Bagerhat, the Buddhist ruins in Paharpur are some of our best tourist destinations. But have we been able to develop and manage this sector as much as we should have?

Although tourism can help increase economic growth with proper development and marketing strategies, sadly, we could not yet come up with a well-coordinated plan to strengthen the sector. According to the Bangladesh Economic Review (2010), the contribution of tourism to Gross Domestic Product was 9.44 percent in 2009-10, which decreased to 4.7 percent in 2015.

Although we have made a lot of improvements in terms of providing accommodation facilities and earned worldwide recognition for being hospitable to foreign tourists, there are many areas such as the communication services, transport and airport facilities where we need to improve. We need to ensure that the services we provide to international tourists are at par with the world's other tourist destinations. And that our best tourist destinations such as Cox's Bazaar or the Sundarbans are kept clean and pollution free and are not harmed due to excessive tourism, meaning that we need to promote responsible tourism. In this respect, we can take lessons from other countries such as Thailand, Malaysia or even Indonesia. Our tourism sector has great potentials, we just need to value this sector and have proper planning to develop it.