Prof. Dr. Md. Wasiul Islam :
In Economics, products and services are classified in various categories. According to one of the categories there are two broad categories, viz., essential (e.g., taking oxygen, staple foods, water, dresses, accommodation, medicines, banking, etc.) and non-essential (e.g., any luxury goods and services like tourism and recreations, buying a big house, having expansive dresses, ornaments, etc.).Therefore, tourism services are treated as non-essential or discretionary services which are not mandatory for our daily life survival. Basically tourists/visitors like to go to a recreational destination to refresh themselves from their usual and monotonous jobs. However, tourism contributes a lot in our personal, family, and professional life which has significant impacts on social, cultural, economic, and environmental aspects of our life.
COVID-19 has seriously affected the whole tourism sector of Bangladesh as well as the entire world in a usual fashion. All the sub-sectors of tourism are still almost shutdown due to the current pandemic situation. The concerned authorities of tourism are thinking about the recovery plan for post pandemic situation. One editorial article titled ‘COVID-19 and Tourism Recovery Plan’ has been published in the Daily New Nations on 1 May 2020 (page 3).
Like other countries, the people of Bangladesh has already been bored and tired being at home since last few months. Bangladeshi people generally like to travel for various purposes where recreation and tourism is one of the major reasons. It is expected that people will love to travel for recreation and tourism just after lifting the lockdown situation. Therefore, tourism industry should ‘reset’ their plans and activities to welcome these travel trusted people considering and maintaining the health safety, environmental, economic, and social norms and standards. This reset situation may be called as ‘new normal’ situation. We have to start rethinking about tourism ecosystem in an integrated way to cope with new challenges in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.
There are basically three different types of tourism: (i) Domestic tourism (ii) Inbound tourism and (iii) Outbound tourism. We need to think separately for all of these three types of tourism. Being a tourism researcher, I am providing here some of the suggestions to boost-up domestic tourism sector of Bangladesh considering the post pandemic situation.
The tourism sector of Bangladesh is mainly driven by domestic tourists (tourists travelling within Bangladesh). Due to the restrictions of international travels both inbound and outbound tourism will be very confined after the pandemic is over resulted more emphasis on domestic tourism. People will be very selective and judicious to travel around the world even after the withdrawal of international travel restrictions.
Unless the vaccines for COVID-19 are invented and lives retreat to the normal mode, people will not feel free to travel an exotic environment. As a result, if we can recover from the pandemic and invent the vaccines as well as the destinations are safe then people will first try to travel within their home country (domestic tourism) to reduce the possibilities of their health hazards. However, we need to be very careful in managing domestic tourism practice in our local destinations during the post-pandemic situation. This will ensure the maximum satisfaction of these tourists as well as to the host communities by promoting their social, cultural, economic, and institutional dimensions.
It is very obvious that our whole tourism practice will not be the same as before the pandemic. There will be a ‘new normal’ situation where tourists will feel comfortable to travel for their recreation. The ‘new normal’ situation will mostly demand the health safety and hygiene issues. Being tourism a non-essential service, sensible tourists will not take any type of health risk by visiting a destination. Therefore, domestic tourist destination authorities as well as other service providers (e.g., transport providers, tour operators, tour guides, accommodation and food providers, etc.) should take some new and innovative actions to ensure the ‘new normal’ situation to attract the tourists and reopen domestic tourism market.
The environmental dimension of the destination (whether natural or built environment) should be considered very seriously by which tourists’ activities may not jeopardize that specific environment which is treated as the tourist attractions of that particular destination. This is particularly crucial for the nature-based destinations like forests (e.g., national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, reserved forests, village forests, etc.), wetlands and any other waterbodies, sea beaches, mountains, rural areas, and so on due to their sensitive nature and fragile ecosystem.
There are certain do’s and don’ts for each of these natural destinations which should be followed by each of the tourists. There should have enough available displayable information regarding these restrictions as well as monitoring and reporting system so that tourists can be well-informed and abided by these restrictions. Educational tourism should be considered for these destinations hence the tourists are aware of the conservation values of these destinations that will promote them to be pro-active in conserving the natural and cultural resources. Guided tours with the assistance of well-trained tour guides and tour operators will facilitate to educate their tourists. The host communities should also be environmentally educated so that they can promote the conservation efforts of the natural resources. Initiatives should be taken by the destination managers and tourism authorities to foster such endeavours.
It is evident that various wildlives are the vectors of several viral and zoonotic (animal born) diseases like SARS, Ebola, Swine flu, Cholera,AIDS, and so on. Many scientists have already claimed that some wildlives like pangolins and bats are the vectors of Corona virus which is responsible for COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2). Therefore, tourists should be very conscious especially when they are inside the forest areas so that no wildlife can be in close contact with them as well as the tourists should not touch even the plant bodies let alone to collect them for their collection. It is recommended to disinfect the whole body (especially hands) of the tourists while they will exit from the destinations. In addition, there might be some muds or soils of the wild environment at the shoe/sandal soles which are required to be cleaned through brushing with a special big brush established at the exit points. This will obviously reduce the chance to be a career of many pathogens and germs.
Moreover, the destination managers, tour operators and tour guides should consider some of the health issues for both the hosts and guests to be aware of. As for example, greetings by hand shaking, embracing, or touching any exposed body parts should be restricted at the post pandemic era. Some basic health etiquettes like coughing, sneezing, yawning, nose picking,touching face and hair unnecessarily, nail biting, throwing used tissue papers/napkins/water bottles/wrappers/other wastages here and there, and so on which may cause the contamination of infectious diseases like COVID-19.
Generally, we are either that much health or environment conscious. Many of the literate people of our country are very much reluctant to these issues let alone the less educated or illiterate people. This is the high time to be educated on these issues and let our children be also educated and ensure the applications of these new habits to change our traditional behaviour to reduce the vulnerability to be infected by such infectious diseases.
Domestic tourism is one of the strong and powerful tools which can educate our people irrespective of their status, education, profession and age regarding these health and environmental essential issues. COVID-19 pandemic might be considered as a signal or even a blessing to create such an opportunity to teach us these silly but very important daily life issues. All the concerned stakeholders starting from the family members/relatives/friends/colleagues to the destination managers (either private/corporate/public) should be proactive in taking their proper actions so that we can change our unfriendly behaviour to our environment and make our environment safe, sound and healthy not only for human being but also for all the creatures that will ultimately present a good ecosystem balance to control various infectious diseases.
The people have been bored with home quarantine/home stay/limited movement that has many psychological effects. So, people will obviously desire to travel around the country rather to avail international travel to refresh themselves. Therefore, domestic tour operators and destination managers may provide various special offers on their tour packages after the pandemic considering the above issues so that the potential tourists may feel comfort to visit any specific destination. Touroperators need to invest money and time in improving customer service and quality experience.
Therefore, there is a significant potential demand of domestic tourism in Bangladesh like any other country. This will also flourish the stagnant domestic tourism market. This is a good opportunity to gain the reliance and credentials for the domestic destination managers and other service providers considering the quality of their services. Otherwise, the market will not be sustained with a healthy tourism demand and supply. It should be noted here that we must have to change our way of providing services to the tourists in the post pandemic era to gain positive feedback with great satisfaction of the tourists. Their experiential words of mouth will facilitate to promote the destinations and service providers to be sustained and resilient in future.
The issues of maintaining social distance, maintaining health and environmental issues in their destinations and service centres will facilitate the potential domestic tourists to visit some destinations after the pandemic era. Moreover, the use of more trained tourism manpower, collaboration,and networking among stakeholders, leveraging resources, innovations, e-marketing, various technologies specially ICT in tourism sector is mandatory to reduce the contamination and increase tourists’ satisfaction. Tourism governance should be ensured at all the stages of tourism practice. There is acute deficiency of domestic tourism of Bangladesh. More research projects are warranted on domestic tourism particularly focusing the existing challenges.
Considering the above notes, if domestic tourism is capable to teach us and facilitate to change our behaviour then it is expected to present a sensible and environment friendly nation. Most of us are domestic tourists. We like to travel at least somewhere in our country for recreational purposes. If every tourist destination manager, transport provider, tour operator, tour guide, accommodation and other service provider can take some new initiatives to make their tourists/guests environmentally conscious then this will bring a big change in our society.
The schools, colleges, universities, offices, business points, any other gathering points should provide some basic institutional facilities and reminders so that we can be environment friendly. In this regard, massive campaigns, motivational activities using various channels like mass medias (both printed and electronic), social medias, face-to-face motivation either in group or individual. Moreover, relevant existing legal tools (rules and regulations) as well as voluntary tools should be implemented strictly with strong monitoring system. The law enforcing agencies, local government and administration should support such initiatives.
(Dr. Md. Wasiul Islam, Professor, Forestry and Wood Technology Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna-9208, e-mail: [email protected])
COVID-19 has seriously affected the whole tourism sector of Bangladesh as well as the entire world in a usual fashion. All the sub-sectors of tourism are still almost shutdown due to the current pandemic situation. The concerned authorities of tourism are thinking about the recovery plan for post pandemic situation. One editorial article titled ‘COVID-19 and Tourism Recovery Plan’ has been published in the Daily New Nations on 1 May 2020 (page 3).
Like other countries, the people of Bangladesh has already been bored and tired being at home since last few months. Bangladeshi people generally like to travel for various purposes where recreation and tourism is one of the major reasons. It is expected that people will love to travel for recreation and tourism just after lifting the lockdown situation. Therefore, tourism industry should ‘reset’ their plans and activities to welcome these travel trusted people considering and maintaining the health safety, environmental, economic, and social norms and standards. This reset situation may be called as ‘new normal’ situation. We have to start rethinking about tourism ecosystem in an integrated way to cope with new challenges in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.
There are basically three different types of tourism: (i) Domestic tourism (ii) Inbound tourism and (iii) Outbound tourism. We need to think separately for all of these three types of tourism. Being a tourism researcher, I am providing here some of the suggestions to boost-up domestic tourism sector of Bangladesh considering the post pandemic situation.
The tourism sector of Bangladesh is mainly driven by domestic tourists (tourists travelling within Bangladesh). Due to the restrictions of international travels both inbound and outbound tourism will be very confined after the pandemic is over resulted more emphasis on domestic tourism. People will be very selective and judicious to travel around the world even after the withdrawal of international travel restrictions.
Unless the vaccines for COVID-19 are invented and lives retreat to the normal mode, people will not feel free to travel an exotic environment. As a result, if we can recover from the pandemic and invent the vaccines as well as the destinations are safe then people will first try to travel within their home country (domestic tourism) to reduce the possibilities of their health hazards. However, we need to be very careful in managing domestic tourism practice in our local destinations during the post-pandemic situation. This will ensure the maximum satisfaction of these tourists as well as to the host communities by promoting their social, cultural, economic, and institutional dimensions.
It is very obvious that our whole tourism practice will not be the same as before the pandemic. There will be a ‘new normal’ situation where tourists will feel comfortable to travel for their recreation. The ‘new normal’ situation will mostly demand the health safety and hygiene issues. Being tourism a non-essential service, sensible tourists will not take any type of health risk by visiting a destination. Therefore, domestic tourist destination authorities as well as other service providers (e.g., transport providers, tour operators, tour guides, accommodation and food providers, etc.) should take some new and innovative actions to ensure the ‘new normal’ situation to attract the tourists and reopen domestic tourism market.
The environmental dimension of the destination (whether natural or built environment) should be considered very seriously by which tourists’ activities may not jeopardize that specific environment which is treated as the tourist attractions of that particular destination. This is particularly crucial for the nature-based destinations like forests (e.g., national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, reserved forests, village forests, etc.), wetlands and any other waterbodies, sea beaches, mountains, rural areas, and so on due to their sensitive nature and fragile ecosystem.
There are certain do’s and don’ts for each of these natural destinations which should be followed by each of the tourists. There should have enough available displayable information regarding these restrictions as well as monitoring and reporting system so that tourists can be well-informed and abided by these restrictions. Educational tourism should be considered for these destinations hence the tourists are aware of the conservation values of these destinations that will promote them to be pro-active in conserving the natural and cultural resources. Guided tours with the assistance of well-trained tour guides and tour operators will facilitate to educate their tourists. The host communities should also be environmentally educated so that they can promote the conservation efforts of the natural resources. Initiatives should be taken by the destination managers and tourism authorities to foster such endeavours.
It is evident that various wildlives are the vectors of several viral and zoonotic (animal born) diseases like SARS, Ebola, Swine flu, Cholera,AIDS, and so on. Many scientists have already claimed that some wildlives like pangolins and bats are the vectors of Corona virus which is responsible for COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2). Therefore, tourists should be very conscious especially when they are inside the forest areas so that no wildlife can be in close contact with them as well as the tourists should not touch even the plant bodies let alone to collect them for their collection. It is recommended to disinfect the whole body (especially hands) of the tourists while they will exit from the destinations. In addition, there might be some muds or soils of the wild environment at the shoe/sandal soles which are required to be cleaned through brushing with a special big brush established at the exit points. This will obviously reduce the chance to be a career of many pathogens and germs.
Moreover, the destination managers, tour operators and tour guides should consider some of the health issues for both the hosts and guests to be aware of. As for example, greetings by hand shaking, embracing, or touching any exposed body parts should be restricted at the post pandemic era. Some basic health etiquettes like coughing, sneezing, yawning, nose picking,touching face and hair unnecessarily, nail biting, throwing used tissue papers/napkins/water bottles/wrappers/other wastages here and there, and so on which may cause the contamination of infectious diseases like COVID-19.
Generally, we are either that much health or environment conscious. Many of the literate people of our country are very much reluctant to these issues let alone the less educated or illiterate people. This is the high time to be educated on these issues and let our children be also educated and ensure the applications of these new habits to change our traditional behaviour to reduce the vulnerability to be infected by such infectious diseases.
Domestic tourism is one of the strong and powerful tools which can educate our people irrespective of their status, education, profession and age regarding these health and environmental essential issues. COVID-19 pandemic might be considered as a signal or even a blessing to create such an opportunity to teach us these silly but very important daily life issues. All the concerned stakeholders starting from the family members/relatives/friends/colleagues to the destination managers (either private/corporate/public) should be proactive in taking their proper actions so that we can change our unfriendly behaviour to our environment and make our environment safe, sound and healthy not only for human being but also for all the creatures that will ultimately present a good ecosystem balance to control various infectious diseases.
The people have been bored with home quarantine/home stay/limited movement that has many psychological effects. So, people will obviously desire to travel around the country rather to avail international travel to refresh themselves. Therefore, domestic tour operators and destination managers may provide various special offers on their tour packages after the pandemic considering the above issues so that the potential tourists may feel comfort to visit any specific destination. Touroperators need to invest money and time in improving customer service and quality experience.
Therefore, there is a significant potential demand of domestic tourism in Bangladesh like any other country. This will also flourish the stagnant domestic tourism market. This is a good opportunity to gain the reliance and credentials for the domestic destination managers and other service providers considering the quality of their services. Otherwise, the market will not be sustained with a healthy tourism demand and supply. It should be noted here that we must have to change our way of providing services to the tourists in the post pandemic era to gain positive feedback with great satisfaction of the tourists. Their experiential words of mouth will facilitate to promote the destinations and service providers to be sustained and resilient in future.
The issues of maintaining social distance, maintaining health and environmental issues in their destinations and service centres will facilitate the potential domestic tourists to visit some destinations after the pandemic era. Moreover, the use of more trained tourism manpower, collaboration,and networking among stakeholders, leveraging resources, innovations, e-marketing, various technologies specially ICT in tourism sector is mandatory to reduce the contamination and increase tourists’ satisfaction. Tourism governance should be ensured at all the stages of tourism practice. There is acute deficiency of domestic tourism of Bangladesh. More research projects are warranted on domestic tourism particularly focusing the existing challenges.
Considering the above notes, if domestic tourism is capable to teach us and facilitate to change our behaviour then it is expected to present a sensible and environment friendly nation. Most of us are domestic tourists. We like to travel at least somewhere in our country for recreational purposes. If every tourist destination manager, transport provider, tour operator, tour guide, accommodation and other service provider can take some new initiatives to make their tourists/guests environmentally conscious then this will bring a big change in our society.
The schools, colleges, universities, offices, business points, any other gathering points should provide some basic institutional facilities and reminders so that we can be environment friendly. In this regard, massive campaigns, motivational activities using various channels like mass medias (both printed and electronic), social medias, face-to-face motivation either in group or individual. Moreover, relevant existing legal tools (rules and regulations) as well as voluntary tools should be implemented strictly with strong monitoring system. The law enforcing agencies, local government and administration should support such initiatives.
(Dr. Md. Wasiul Islam, Professor, Forestry and Wood Technology Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna-9208, e-mail: [email protected])
