~courtesy Moshiur R. Khandaker, Chief Executive, SAFE~

International Coastal Cleanup 2006: Bangladesh, originally uploaded by coastalcleanup.

SAFE has undertaken Cleanup Bangladesh Campaign in close cooperation with Clean Up The World campaign & Project AWARE. As part of this campaign Cleanup for Earth day will be held on April 22, 2009. Volunteers from different organization will be participating in this year’s beach and underwater Cleanup as part of an earth day activity at Cox’s bazar, St.Martin and Kuakata. It’s a great way for volunteers of all ages to learn about how to reduce the impact of waste and make a real difference in conserving the environment.

As a member of the ‘Clean Up The World’ campaign, our national efforts will be recognized internationally. Supported by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Clean Up The World is a global environmental initiative that attracts an estimated 35 million participants in more than 110 countries each year. To learn more about Clean up the World visit their website or the SAFE website.

Thousands of people across the globe will be having fun and getting wet to celebrate cleanup for Earth Day. A special SAFE team consists of doctors, first aiders & rescue personnel will be formed to ensure the health, safety and medical emergency of all the participants.

The main attractions of this event are following:

• Beach rubbish collection
• Separate recyclable rubbish
• Remove harmful marine debris
• Collect rubbish survey information
• Provide volunteers with a project AWARE Certificate of Recognition and more…

Thanks in advance for your co-operation. Your support in the Earth day activity will be highly appreciated.

Safety Assistance For Emergencies (SAFE); a leading voluntary organization born in Bangladesh protecting human lives, providing emergency medical aid to victims of any disaster and helping people avoid, prepare for, and cope with emergencies. Also strives to improve basic health, safety and environment issues in Bangladesh.

~story and photo by Belinda Meggitt~

Originally published in the New Age, Feb. 13, 2008. More photos available here.

For a country that blossoms with national pride, the majority of Bangladeshis fail to respect the country’s natural wonders.

St Martin’s Island, where once thousands of migratory birds sought refuge, turtles laid eggs and coral grew, now bustles with migratory tourists and growing piles of plastic. Economic development drives tourism, but what tourists and hotel owners fail to acknowledge is their impact. The gold rush of tourism to St Martin’s Island will be short-lived unless changes are made immediately.

Only a few years ago, the island was an ecological refuge. ‘It was the best place for turtle nesting and even schoolchildren protected the nests,’ recalls Elisabeth Mansur, Chief Executive Officer of Guide Tours. ‘The biodiversity was truly amazing.’

Tourists were still able to visit, but it was a form of adventure tourism. The rocky journey – via a country boat crammed with the islands supplies – limited the number of tourists, as did the one beach hut. But the tourists that came were rewarded by natural beauty, an experience that didn’t resemble a Thai beach Mecca. Now, four large vessels ply the crossing daily during high season. Most tourists stay anywhere from three hours to a little over 24. It’s not hard to imagine why the island is disappearing in a state of disrepair.

Mansur says eco-tourism was discussed at length before the hotel explosion in 2005. There was a plan to maintain St Martin’s biodiversity.

‘Private industry sat for many months making a good development plan of how soft-ecotourism and responsible travel could develop,’ says Mansur. ‘But that’s when the government went ahead and opened the land rights for people from the mainland.’

The tourist gold rush was funded from the outside, and it looks just like that. As you approach the island, garish concrete monoliths litter the beach side dwarfing the small unobtrusive local bamboo village huts. Internally, hotel rooms resemble prison cells with stains up and down the walls, but it is nothing a good paint job couldn’t fix.

Nonetheless most hotel owners refuse to focus on upkeep when hotel rooms are fully booked during the peak season. They then leave the island with their pockets bulging after just four months’ work and return next year to repeat the cycle.

This same lack of care permeates the environment. Hotels are not managing their wastewater, causing damage to fragile coral reefs and marine biodiversity. Plastic bottles and litter float in the ocean or lay strewn on the beach. The scene resembles a battlefield where dead carcasses lie, yet these ones don’t decompose. A local shop owner stated: ‘There is a lot of plastic waste and it can’t be broken down, we all know it causes a lot of environmental damage.’

A change in wildlife patterns is a symbol of that. ‘There used to be a lot of migratory birds,’ recalled the shop owner, ‘but now they don’t come due to the number of crows.’ Crows are scavenger birds that reflect the extent of rubbish polluting the island.

Turtle nesting has likewise decreased. When questioned, fisherman and local shop owners all spoke of the marked decrease in numbers. Among the reasons proposed were the increase use of dragnets by fisherman that turtles get stuck in, hotel lights on the beach that deter nesting and even large tourist boats interrupting their path. No matter what the proposed reason, an easy hypothesis to conclude is that tourism is having an impact –– an impact that will permanently change St Martin’s Island, unless the form of tourism changes.

Amongst this destructive development, locals are forced to maintain their business. Largely excluded from the tourist labour force, they continue with their traditional fishing lifestyle. Fisherman use dragnets in a desperate search for fish and it is not uncommon to see small sharks, even endangered hammerhead sharks, for sale at the local market.

Tourist inflation is also evident. Local village children are now begging for Tk 100 rather than one, a familiarity that stings like tourism in Nepal. Yet a little initiative can go a long way and some children even offer their services as guides, or their boats to go fishing.

Tourism development can be a positive force, but it has to be managed appropriately. ‘You don’t have to discourage people not to go, but they should know what’s happening,’ states Mansur.

Responsible travel is an approach to travel that minimises negative environmental and cultural impacts, but encourages an understanding and transference of knowledge. It is an approach to travel that is sustainable and will bring lasting benefits to Bangladesh’s economy. It is not a quick financial fix. As a stance against the lack of responsible travel witnessed in St Martin’s, Guide Tours has recently removed it from their packages.

What stance will you take?

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.

Bangladesh will become a traveler’s destination, but not the way you imagine, argues Mikey Leung.

This article originally published in the Daily Star’s Forum Magazine at this weblink.

The number of reasons that travelers avoid Bangladesh cannot even be counted on two hands.

On foreign television screens, riots and floods are the leading actors; their supporting cast is no less extraordinary. Pseudo-Islamic extremism garners a major role, while abject poverty plays like a forgettable soundtrack. Interminable corruption adds to the atmosphere of a Shakespearean tragedy: the characters always suffer inescapably under the weight of their own extraordinary gluttony.

For a country whose world reputation seems to be constantly drowning, it is hard to imagine that Bangladesh will one day become a traveler’s destination on par with its neighbours. How is this possible? In five years, the Bangladesh travel industry will be totally unrecognisable compared to the industry of today.

Tourism in Bangladesh is inevitable

Consider the Chinese tourism experience, a path this nation already treads. Little more than 10 years ago, Chinese domestic tourism was infantile, in the same way that Bangladeshi tourism is now embryonic. Powered by an upwardly mobile middle class, the industry evolved new tourism products while promoting existing destinations. The market was literally captive: very few Chinese had the means to travel outside China. Even today, very few do.

Even if Bangladesh’s tourism market wasn’t growing, worldwide travel trends, by virtue of their exponential increase, would inevitably prop it up. This is because intrepid travelers can and do hunger for new cultures and unvisited frontiers, as it is in the adventurer’s nature to seek both the exotic and the unknown. Each year, more and more travelers are willing to look over India’s border and discover what this country is really about. Seen in this light, Bangladesh is truly an unexplored treasure.

Responsibility lies with operators to drive the market

That being said, it is totally unrealistic to expect Cambodia’s overnight success or even India’s robust growth. The Sundarbans, as Bangladesh’s prime attraction, is simply not spectacular or iconic enough to prop up an entire industry the way that Angkor does. Nevertheless, local operators are now aware that people, both Bengali and otherwise, want to take holidays from their high-pressure urban lifestyles, and that untrammeled beauty lies just outside the atrocious conditions of Dhaka.

Like it or not, Bangladesh’s interim government now provides travelers with a form of relative stability, which goes a long way when planning trips inside the desh. But as the government remains unaccountable to its people, we cannot look to Parjatan, the national tourism organisation, for stewardship. The responsibility to manage and drive the industry forward lies squarely on the shoulder of Bangladesh’s tourism operators, who also have the most to gain from this growth.

In order for local operators to increase their share of the meagre but lucrative inbound market — i.e. the market that spends dollars, euros and pounds instead of taka — a change in priorities is required first. Marketers must realise that Bangladesh can only promote itself as an alternative travel destination and on the grounds of poverty alleviation, using means that go far beyond the slogan: “Visit Bangladesh Before Tourists Come” [sic].

“Responsible Travel” (RT) — www.responsibletravel.com — is a philosophy that is redefining the way people travel around the world, and the term is much more broad and encompassing than the well-battered word “eco-tourism.” Nowadays, under the auspices of RT, the discerning consumer wants a holiday that minimises his/her impact on the environment and detrimental influence on local cultures, while simultaneously enlightening themselves about the world abroad. Events such as the Banglalink International Coastal Cleanup, held in 2007, are encouraging in this regard.

Travelers, especially the kind that would travel to Bangladesh, aren’t content to lie like beached whales for weeks at a stretch. People want trips that broaden their life perspective and teach them far more about the diversity and cultures of our world. Bangladesh offers plenty of life lessons and eye-opening experiences, none of which top any of the “best of” or “top ten” lists — so why bother focusing on that humdrum market? Local operators must strengthen themselves on the responsible travel niche market and brief themselves on its requirements.

Serious perception changes are needed

Speaking of markets, the industry lacks marketing professionalism, which is severely crippling the industry’s inbound tourism growth. Because international travelers have a much higher service expectation than most domestic travelers, they judge operators (and hence destinations) on the basis of their professionalism. And although there may be many professional operations in Bangladesh, both large and small, there is a terrible lack of connection between their products and the discerning dollar-spending traveler.

Marketing is all about influencing the consumer’s perception of the product, and Bangladesh should stop leaving the determination of its image to the world’s merciless mainstream media. Instead, local operators should begin providing truthful, well researched and easy-to-understand information on what a journey to the country will be like, and why it will be memorable (see the Bangladesh section of www.undiscovered-destinations.com for an example of good, straightforward marketing).

Most operators have also seriously overlooked how to capture the captive market, i.e. locally based expatriates, and decent marketing would also help in this regard. Most of these expatriates suffer from a lack of knowledge on what to do and how to do it, as there is very little local or up-to-date info on the nuts and bolts of a journey in Bangladesh. Many perceive travel in the country to be inconvenient, unsafe and/or insecure, a perception that is mostly unfounded because of a lack of objective and adequate travel information.

At this point, you may have noticed the use of the term “traveler” instead of “tourist,” and this demonstrates the subtleties of effective marketing. A tourist is the kind seeking an ordinary holiday, where as the traveler seeks unique experiences that broaden their world. Because most expatriates who live in Bangladesh have already had the benefit of living outside their home nations, most consider themselves “travelers” and have more sophisticated tastes than the simple Thailand tourist.

Focus on strengths

To recap: thus far we’ve established that a) Bangladesh has a terrible world reputation that must be changed, and b) there already exists a captive market in Bangladesh (i.e. locally-based expatriates). So the question thus becomes: how do we change the perception of this target market? A good start would be to improve Bangladesh’s already existing “draw-cards” in the eyes of those who live here already.

The Sundarbans should be the first and foremost target of this image improvement. But it would help to actually improve the visitor experience of the Sundarbans first. Such initiatives need not be difficult, costly nor complicated. A visitor information centre, even one with the most basic of facilities such as posters and photographs, would go a long way in assisting the curious visitor to understand the unique eco-system at work in the mangrove forest. It would also help tourists to envision the lives of understandably shy wildlife, especially that of the Royal Bengal Tiger. As tourism growth occurs in Bangladesh, its impact needs to be carefully managed in the Sundarbans, lest the tourists destroy what they’ve come to experience.

The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) could also use a perception adjustment, as most local people who live there will tell you that it is safe to travel inside the tracts and that the security risk is terribly overblown (of course, there are some caveats depending on where you go). However, most foreign countries advise against travel to the CHT (or all but essential travel, depending on which country).

Again, the truth is that the CHT is one of Bangladesh’s most beautiful regions, and quite a treat to visit on the basis of its cultural, geographical and culinary diversity. When taking local advice, a journey to Rangamati and Bandarbans can be quite safe and very much a highlight of a visit to Bangladesh. Perhaps adventurous travelers are willing to look deeper, ask more questions and learn the truth about potential visits to the CHT. But, like it or not, the great majority of people are content to listen to their government’s advice, which in turn takes the advice of the Bangladesh government when creating its advisories. It is a shame that the Bangladesh government and its military still has so much to hide about the hill tracts, which makes visitor arrivals all the more important and necessary.

A not-so-obvious suggestion: Focus on the captive audience

Draw-cards aside, the tourism industry needs to create and aggressively market new products that focus solely on the expatriate market, as there are a tremendous number of expatriates who rarely leave Dhaka, and so their perception of Bangladesh is based solely on their impressions of the capital city. Not only is this a serious and grave error, these are the impressions that expatriates take to other countries around the world.

The fact is that expatriates are the springboard for accessing new tourist markets as one can never underestimate the power of the word of mouth. It is very rare to meet short-term visitors to Bangladesh, and the ones that do visit for less than a month are usually here as guests of people that already live here.

Currently, this same expatriate market generates a section of people who mostly choose to take their holidays outside Bangladesh instead of inside, which once again demonstrates the terrible lack of linkages between Bangladesh’s professional operators and the proposed target market.

It will be expensive and ineffective for local operators to reach the worldwide market at the current time, so this is why operators should focus on the captive audience. The goal of these initiatives is to create a buzz that will generate new visitor arrivals in the country and eventually drive the tourism market forward. But operators need to convince the captive market first, before it can do any kind of job reaching the outside world.

For all of its downsides, Bangladesh does have extraordinary tourism potential. Opportunities for exploration abound, the countryside is beautiful and Bangladesh’s economy is plodding forward despite some unfathomable hindrances. In order to progress to another level in the worldwide tourism playing field, the country must go about the difficult task of changing its world image, a process that first begins from within.

Mikey Leung is a freelance travel journalist. He is currently researching a new book on Bangladesh (www.joybangla.info) for Bradt Travel Guides, a UK-based alternative guidebook publisher. He is also a former tour leader with Australia-based Intrepid Travel (www.intrepidtravel.com). This article originally published here.