With more than 100km (62.5 miles)
of sand, Cox's Bazar has the world's longest uninterrupted natural beach.Bangladesh's
fledgling but troubled tourism industry is slowly luring foreign and domestic
travellers, industry officials say. One of the most popular destinations this
winter was this beach resort town of Cox's Bazar on the Bay of Bengal, which
drew sun-worshippers from as far away as Europe and Southeast Asia.
Activists say many tourists take
coral home as souvenirs. As a result, traders and locals frequently collect
corals and sea shells from nearby islands like St Martin's.
What is more visible to visitors is
the pollution in and around Cox's Bazar's. As it attracts millions of tourists,
tonnes of empty packaging and plastic water bottles are strewn across the beach
area.
There are no official figures on the
numbers of visitors to Cox's Bazar this winter, but hotel owners said the
10,000 rooms available were full almost seven days a week in December and a
second rush is expected for the Eid-al Adha festival February 13. "The
winter season helps us to go through rest of the year, when the number of
travellers drop dramatically along with revenue," said an official at a
major hotel.
Cox's Bazar got its first five-star
accomodation in December, a hotel overlooking the world's largest natural white
sand beach and basking in its spectacular sunsets.
The maximum temperature here in the
winter is only about 12 degrees Celsius (53.6 degrees Fahrenheit), but tourists
on the seashore enjoy cups of tea, snacks or the very popular green coconut
water.
A spokesman for the state-owned
Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation (BPC), told AFP tourism was growing every year,
with the government doing its best to lure travellers to the South Asian
nation.
BPC statistics show just 11,179
people visited the country in 1992, but the figure jumped massively in 2000 to
207,199 visitors, who brought in about 2.65 billion taka (about 46 million USD)
in foreign exchange. No figures are available for 2001 and 2002. Of total
travellers in 2000, nearly 18.56 percent came to Bangladesh for pleasure
visits, 16.47 percent were on business and the remainder - nearly 70 percent -
had multiple reasons for arriving. Britons, Americans, Koreans, Japanese,
Indians, Nepalese and Pakistanis topped the list of foreign travellers.
Until about two decades ago, Cox's
Bazar was a sleepy beach town which attracted mostly Bangladeshis looking to
escape the noise and pollution of big cities like Dhaka and Chittagong.
However, the entire landscape has
changed and hundreds of high-rise hotel buildings, apartment blocks and
restaurants have mushroomed in the area.
On the main beach itself, there are
dozens of shops selling souvenirs, toys, clothes and fast food.
Hotels and restaurants are being
erected in almost every part of the town and in nearby beach areas as the
construction boom continues.
Environmentalists fear if the
illegally built buildings along the main beach are not removed soon, the area
may never recover and its beauty will be lost forever.
The Bangladesh Monitor, a
fortnightly tabloid focusing on the tourism industry, said Bangladesh was a
promising destination for foreign tourists, but infrastructure problems,
including hotel accommodation, were a major impediment to growth.
Private hotels have recently been
built in the picturesque southeastern Banderban district, where a tribal
insurgency ended in 1997 with a peace treaty. The government recently handed
over some of BPC's motels and restaurants in Cox's Bazar and elsewhere to
private management to increase revenue as well as ensure better facilities for
tourists.
Locals, too, are saving their taka
to travel, choosing destinations like Cox's Bazar and islands in the Bay of
Bengal, as well as the Sunderbans, the world's largest mangrove forests, the
tea-growing Sylhet district, the southeastern hill tracts region and historical
sites.
For decades, tourism was not on a
priority for Bangladesh.
But amid an uncertain economic
outlook, if they can get it right, tourism may offer the country a perfect
opportunity to diversify its revenue base and change its image to the world.
The challenge for the government,
however, is how to balance the need to promote development without hurting
local ecology.
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