Tourism planning
The current tourism planning in Bangladesh, despite the potentiality, is yet to achieve satisfactory standards. If there were proper planning, reasonable level of development could have been achieve over the past years even with the government's meagre budgetary allocation.
The stereotyped tourism development in Bangladesh is only to create some facilities in the form of hotels, motels, restaurants etc. though those are not sufficient at all. This kind of planning does not involve local people in tourism development. Hence, the benefits do not cascade down to the local people. Tourism planning should be a bottom-up approach. The planners should build a good rapport and make them understand about the process. Sometimes some projects are initiated where local people are kept away.
Such projects that involve local people at the level of planning and monitoring should be initiated. In this regard some planning tools such as Social Mobilization (SM), Appreciative Participatory Planning and Action (APPA), Marketing and Development Tool (MAD), Enterprise and Social Services (ESS) may be considered. In Japan, the local government initiates all the tourism planning and the local people play the leading role in development of tourism attractions and resource conservation. This helps the development of sustainable tourism. Bangladesh may take such initiative in the tourism potential areas like Chittagong Hill Tracts, Netrokona haor area, Teknaf and in other char lands.
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