Photo: Munir uz Zaman / driknews

When I heard that Cox's Bazar and Sundarbans were nominated to be among the new seven natural wonders of the world, I felt great! I have already voted for the two spots. Last year many people, including Bangladeshi celebrities, walked more than 100 kilometers along the seashore from Teknaf to Cox's Bazar. If I had been there at the time, I would have liked to join them. Travel is my number one hobby. On many occasions I had the chance to travel to many countries, which I did in Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East. Tourism is a huge industry, many countries earn billions of dollars though this business and thousands of jobs are created. First of all, we have to understand the key ingredients of this business. Nowadays nobody travels like Ibne Botuta, everybody is busy working. Here in Toronto, I have been working for a corporation for quite a few years. In my office every 7 or 8 weeks, people take a week off to reenergize and break free from their daily routine that they are tired of. Although we work for 40 hours Monday to Friday and it's not hard manual work but I still get bored. Sometimes I take my annual leave for the whole year, 6 weeks all together and go to Bangladesh, they never think about doing it that way. In the summertime they go north to their cottage, down to a resort in the Caribbean, or on a cruise for a week. They always make plans for their next vacation a month ahead. This is the western lifestyle, in Europe, America, Australia and Japan, the lifestyle is very similar. Travel agents provide us with brochures, so people will know which country costs how much and can choose their own affordable vacation.
In Asia, well known tourist destinations such as Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia are very popular. Even Maldives, Nepal and India have very developed tourism sectors. Unfortunately, Bangladesh is not there, our only activities are seminars and conferences. We have many beautiful natural places but we never developed them according to international standards. The government has to make a plan, find the right investor, give 4 to 5 kilometers of land to the investor for development, build huge hotels and clean up the seashore to match international standards. When people come here for a week they must be able to enjoy every moment. The Cox's Bazar airport needs little upgrading, so that an international chartered flight full of tourists can land here comfortably. Tourists can come from Stockholm, Oslo, Frankfurt, Paris, Tokyo and even Sydney to Cox's Bazar with a direct flight that takes only 10 to 12 hours. Bangladesh has private airlines that can have a business of chartered air. In the beginning we need lots of advertising and promotion, travel agents can do this for extra percentage of profit. After a few years when the business is fully running we can easily make this area like Cancun(Mexico), Shamal Sheik(Egypt), or Gold Coast(Australia).
Cuba is one of the popular vacation places to people of Canada, only a three hour flight from Toronto, five or six days for hotel, food, and airfare, everything included, is $600 to $700 per person. Overall, Cuba has a very poor living standard but the tourist resorts are secure. Many Canadian investors open businesses there, people go there for holidays from all over the world. The same way, in Bangladesh private investors can create their own security with the cooperation of government law enforcement so that the tourist and resort area can be safe and secure from vagabonds and unwanted people. When the reputation builds up, tourists will come automatically. Bangladesh can also open many new tourist sectors, there is Sundarbans, Kaptai Lake, the huge Jamuna River and many other places we can make into beautiful tourist resorts. In Niagara Falls, tourists can ride in helicopters to see the falls from high up in the sky. How far is Mount Everest from our Tentulia? In the future, maybe, some investor will start tourist helicopter rides from Tentulia to Mount Everest, it's not a bad dream!
As a hard working and peace loving nation, we need honest, strong and good leadership because smart and serious decisions are very important for developing the tourism industry. Let's start working!