Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Bangladesh Tourism & Hospitality Industry with Recovery Strategies

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to find out the impact of COVID-19 on tourism and hospitality industry of Bangladesh and to provide some recovery strategies for this industry’s restoration. The tourism and hospitality industry is badly impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak. Bangladesh has also faced a detrimental effect. Because of the pandemic, policymakers and travel and tourism professionals might anticipate large losses (in terms of GDP generated by tourism). Existing literature and secondary data sources such as journals, newspaper articles, different webpages, webinars and organizational and government publications were used to conduct this research. This industry is having a rough time at the start of the lockdown from March 2020 to till now. Because of the strict lockdown, no one is allowed to move unless it is for an emergency. People were temporarily barred from entering or leaving a confined region, making travel difficult and prohibitive. When the country's residents were released from the lockdown in the second half of 2020, the sector had an opportunity to slowly rebuild through domestic tourism. Bangladesh is a country that has been heavily reliant on domestic tourism from its inception. The same thing happened this time, with domestic tourists serving as the industry's savior. Recently, Bangladesh has discovered its first case of a highly virulent coronavirus variant initially identified in India in May 2021 and the industry came to a halt again. In this industry some 4.0 million people are involved and they are struggling to survive now. The government of Bangladesh has offered an incentive package for early economic recovery, but this will not be enough to help this delicate industry recover quickly. The article determines the present state of the COVID-19 pandemic in the tourism and hospitality industry and provides some recovery strategies to revive this industry. This article will be helpful for further study and decision making for policy makers, practitioners, academicians and other tourism stakeholders.