In-bound tourism is an export for a country, as the country earns foreign exchange from the tourists it receives. With the dollars a country earns from the in-bound tourism, it may pay many of its import bills, thus tourism may become an important factor in the balance of payments of many countries. All these important factors about tourism have, unfortunately, been evading us. Till now we have failed to grasp the benefits of tourism.

Our performance in tourism is dismal. In the year 1998, Cambodia, once know as the killing fields, received 96,000 foreign tourists. In that year, Bangladesh received around 150,000 foreign tourists. Last year, Cambodia received more than 1,800,000 tourists, and we, in turn, received a little bit more than 200,000. In the year 2004, Malaysia earned the US dollar equivalent of Taka thirty billion from tourism; the amount is more than half of the total sum of our national budget for the year of 2006-2007.

The statistics speak for themselves.

The economies of Jordan, Egypt, Maldives, Cyprus, and many other countries solely or largely depend on the earnings from tourism.

Why are we lagging behind in tourism? The answer is very simple. Our tourism development activities evolve around our desire of getting domestic media coverage; though it does not help us a dime in our efforts to attract foreign tourists.

Why is our showing so poor? What do not we have to attract foreign tourists? The single largest Buddhist monastery of the world, Paharpur Mahavihara, is located in Bangladesh. Two-thirds of the world's largest mangrove forest, the Sunderbans, is our treasure. This forest has the largest wild population of the Royal Bengal Tigers. We have got the longest unbroken sea beach in the world. Our landscape is evergreen under the sun almost all round the year. Our people are hospitable. Our country is well connected by air with the outside world. The road communications inside the country are good enough to take the tourists to the tourism attractions of the country. In which country in the world can one enjoy such a glowing sunset as in Bangladesh? What more do we need to attract the imagination of the international tourists?

Some of us have the misconception about tourism. Whenever they think of tourism, they think of nightclubs, bars, massage parlours, etc. In the year 2005, the total number of international tourist arrivals was 880 million. The tourists who belong to the eco-tourism and responsible tourism segments of this huge international tourism market do not at all seek nightlife in the countries they visit. They seek only to experience the nature, culture, and heritage of their destination countries. And the volume of these segments of the international tourism market is no less than 150 million at this moment. The number of eco-tourists and responsible tourists has been increasing at the rate of more than 10 percent a year. Our national tourism marketing strategy should make these segments of the international tourist market as the target, not the whole of the market.

Our country has a negative image of a country of flood and famine in the outside world, specially in those fifteen developed countries which generates eighty percent of the total international tourists. The photographs we print in our tourism brochures and posters and put on our websites confirm our image as an extremely poverty-stricken country, as well as a country of primitive society.

We boast of projecting Dhaka as a city of rickshaws. Anybody who has not visited Bangladesh, looking at a picture in brochures, posters, websites, of the Dhaka city swarming with rickshaws, will think that not a single car plies on the streets of this city. This is how we are projecting our country to the outside world, and trying to attract foreign tourists. Projecting our country in such a light for the last 35 years, we have not been able to attract even 5,000 leisure tourists a year. Now it is the high time to change our conception about how to portray our country to the eyes of the foreign tourists. Do we know that Dhaka city is becoming a city of skyscrapers? Why shall we not highlight this feature of Dhaka city in our tourism marketing efforts?

The rally on World Tourism Day (September 27) and tourism posters on the walls in the Dhaka city will not help as to get a single more foreign tourist. We need to take pragmatic steps to increase international tourist flow to our country.

Cambodia has its tourism websites in eight languages; Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia in 12 languages, and we have ours only in one language, in English. Once we were ruled by the English speaking colonialists; it dose not mean that this language is good enough to market our tourism products in the non-English speaking countries, which belong to the top 15 tourist generating countries in the world.

If we want to increase tourism in our country, we need to motivate our people at our embassies and high commissions abroad that tourists are our "paying guests," not adversaries, so there is no credit in refusing them visas to come to our country. To get the enormous benefit of tourism, our government needs to shed its "policy of reciprocity" regarding issuance of visa to foreign nationals.

"Tourism Enriches" -- let the theme of this year's World Tourism Day come true in Bangladesh.

Faruque Hasan is a freelance contributor to The Daily Star.