Hasan Mansur, on right, at the September 2007 Bangladesh Travel and Tourism Fair. Click the photo to see more images from the fair.

Hasan Mansur likes to think of his work as “seeding fertile ground.”

The former agriculturalist was studying in the United States when he met a Swedish gentlemen who, at first, employed him as an impromptu tour operator and fixer.

Mansur would later become the father of Bangladesh’s embryonic tourist industry, after that same Swede employed him around South Asia and gave him all the background and experienced he needed to set up Guide Tours in 1989. Today he is the president of the Tourism Operators Association of Bangladesh (TOAB). He has now stepped back from the day-to-day operations of Guide Tours and is working for the development of the industry and its operators with TOAB.

“It was April 1989,” says Mansur, of the founding of his company. “I thought, let me plant a small tree and if it becomes big, it will provide shade, many people can come around and take shelter.”

Several years later, that tree is still growing and Bangladesh’s domestic tourism industry is now growing steadily.

“I have proven that it is possible to have a tourism business and survive in Bangladesh,” says Mansur.