Hospitality and tourism sectors are taking the heat of terrorist attacks in Gulshan, with foreigners cancelling their scheduled trips to Bangladesh for security fears, tour and hotel operators said yesterday.
On July 1, militants stormed an upscale restaurant located in the capital's diplomatic zone, killing 20 diners, mostly foreigners. The massacre sent shockwaves across the country and beyond.
Many foreigners who had plans to visit Dhaka for leisure or business purposes in the coming months have already cancelled bookings with tour operators.
The luxury hotels in Dhaka and the tourist attractions are witnessing a similar fate despite beefed-up security measures.
The biggest example is the cancellation of an international event on telecommunication, scheduled to be held in Dhaka from September 29 to October 6.
About 450 foreign nationals were supposed to attend the event, which has now been shifted to Thailand.
As per the planned programme, the Internet Service Providers Association Bangladesh booked 150 rooms and three conference halls at Amari Dhaka from September 29 to October 2 to facilitate the event and foreign guests.
The organiser also booked 450 rooms and four conference halls at Le Meridien Dhaka from October 3 to 6.
“We cancelled all the bookings by email last Friday and sent formal letters to the hotel authorities to this effect,” MA Hakim, president of the Internet Service Providers Association Bangladesh, said yesterday.
Tour operators and hospitality service providers said the attack in the heart of the diplomatic zone of the capital have deepened security fears among all, dimming the prospects of a rebound in inbound tourism from its slump in 2013.
Inbound tourism started to recover from a battering following the murders of Japanese and Italian nationals in September last year, said Faridul Haque, managing director of Tour Planners Ltd.
“But the Gulshan incident is a total disaster for tourism,” he said, adding that tourists of all countries except China have cancelled travel programmes.
“All of us are in bad shape,” said Haque, also an adviser of the Tour Operators Association of Bangladesh.
A senior official of an international hotel chain in Dhaka, seeking to remain unnamed, said their situation is also similar to others.
“We have seen a good number of cancellations on reservations for the current month. Occupancy too has been affected.”
He said the business prospects for the month of August would depend largely on the overall law and order situation in the next two to three weeks.
Masud Hossain, chief executive of Bengal Tours Ltd, a leading tour operator, said some 300 bookings have been cancelled since the July 1 attack.
Most of the advance bookings with Bengal Tours until the end of 2017 have been cancelled, while some have been kept on hold.
“Most of the tourists were scheduled to come from Japan and Europe.”
Some 200 fans of England cricket team signed up with Bengal Tours for the England cricket team's tour of Bangladesh later this year. “They informed us that they would not come,” Hossain said. Bengal, which handled 4,500 foreign tourists a couple of years ago, said inbound tourism has been on the wane.
The company got only 900 inbound tourists in 2015-16 and saw a deluge of cancellations after the murder of two foreign nationals -- one Japanese and one Italian -- last year.
Bengal expected to host 3,000-4000 tourists in 2016-17, Hossain said. “This is the worst time for tourism,” said Wahid Ullah, managing director of Silver Wave Tours.
The company was deep in preparation for its clients' arrival in September-October, when terror struck the capital. “We got our first mail of cancellation the very next morning from Japan.” Wahid Ullah said his company has also cancelled bookings in hotels that were given for 100 tourists who were scheduled to come from England to watch the Bangladesh-England cricket matches in October.
“It would be tough to maintain operational expenses if this spate of cancellations continues,” he added.
The Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel has not been impacted much because of renovations of most of its rooms, said MA Awal, its director of sales and marketing.
While some reservations were cancelled the day after the Gulshan attack, five foreign guests checked in on Saturday, he said. Selina Momen, director of public relations and liaison of the Westin Dhaka, said normally the presence of foreign guests is not much during this time. But it will take a few more days to get a true sense of the impact of the terror attack in Dhaka. “However, we have already beefed up security. Apart from the government law-enforcement agencies, we have tightened our own private security,” she added.
Haque of Tour Planners said it is necessary to inform the tourist police whenever any visitor arrives.
He also urged the government to sit with all parties to address the problems of extremism.
