Sustainable Tourism Development in the South-West Region of Bangladesh

Abstract

Tourism can play an important role in accelerating the economic growth of Bangladesh. This study tries to address the tourism sector of Bangladesh from sustainability viewpoint. The study selects four tourist spots in the south-west region of Bangladesh to address the study objective and collects primary data from the tourists of the selected spots through using interview schedule. Accordingly, it tries to trace out the prevailing situation of the tourist spots. It also attempts to trace out the factors determining the probability of future trip generation towards the spots. The study findings indicate that travel time, travel cost and travel distance negatively influence the probability of future trip generation. Similarly, married people are less interested to revisit the tourist spots. However, environmental consciousness campaign and existing resource caring initiatives of the spot authority have a positive impact on trip generation possibility. An opinion survey reveals that the tourists value the prevailing resource caring activities and environmental consciousness campaign which attracts them to revisit the spots. However, the tourists poorly rank the ecotourism maintaining effort and pollution protective mechanism in the spots. Therefore, an integrated approach towards maintaining and uplifting the efforts towards sustainable tourism management might contribute towards long run stability of the tourism sector.