The Bhutanese Leading the way.
The committee tasked to look at tourism reforms has submitted its report to the government and it has proposed a host of measures to boost tourism but the Sustainable Development Fund (SDF) is not being touched either as a whole or for border towns which had been asking for waivers beyond the current 24-hour waiver.
The committee included stakeholders like Association of Bhutanese Tour Operators, Hotel Association of Bhutan etc. and they worked for the last one month and visited Phuentsholing, Samdrupjongkhar and Samtse too.
One major recommendation is marketing and advocacy which would be further strengthened and where the Prime Minister himself will be involved. There will be an aim to operationalize this by giving action points to the PM when he goes out and meets the media etc. He will officially and formally do marketing. The Tourism Department expects this to be a game changer.
Another step is also marketing where the private sector will be taken on board and there will be joint marketing along with the government.
The next recommendation is to improve the payment gateways as it is a struggle at times to send money here which can discourage and even put off tour groups and the other issue is credit cards not working here at times.
One recommendation is on streamlining visa processing as there are still challenges and here the government has already announced 24 hours visa services.
A recommendation is to allow tourists entry and exit through Samtse, Gelephu and Samdrupjongkhar with the focus first being on Samdrupjongkhar and here the matter will be taken up with the GoI once again.
There is also a recommendation to open up new airline destinations like Dubai and Kuwait.
Embassies and missions will also be given official instructions to send tourists to Bhutan.
One more idea is to improve roadside amenities and facilities.
A source said the SDF has not been touched as it would lead to Bhutan being criticized for changing its policies again.
The USD 100 SDF discount and SAARC airline fair coming back has led to higher numbers of tourists compared to last year but tour operators say it is still around 50 to 60% of 2019 before COVID.
The tourist arrival target this year was originally 160,000 but it was increased to 300,000. Given the response so far, the target of 300,000 looks highly unlikely to be achieved.
A bright spot is that many hotels have been booked out for the Paro Tsechu which is likely an impact of the SDF discount but again this is only for a few days and it remains to be seen if this impact lasts for other weeks.
The aim going forward is to promote Bhutan as a destination throughout the year.
While the official report does not mention any SDF changes the ABTO has requested the government to consider giving the old schemes with 50% SDF discount after 9 nights and 100% SDF discount after the 15th night.
ABTO has also requested that border towns be SDF free zones. Both of these have not been considered in the final report sent to the cabinet.
