The Bhutanese Leading the way.
In 2019, Bhutan received around 300,000 tourists, but today, in the post-pandemic era the numbers of hotels and rooms have almost doubled and in 2025 around 200,000 tourists have come to Bhutan.
While the numbers are going up, it is clear that the number of nights has reduced for both Indian and third country tourists.
In many ways, Bhutan is now paying a price for the recklessness of past governments policies and also the McKinsey inspired tourism policy that changed high value and low volume to high value and high volume along with major tax holidays and breaks to build hotels.
Given the limited avenues of investment in Bhutan, many people over invested in hotels and now there is a clear over capacity and even 300,000 tourists may not be enough.
The failure of the tourism industry to develop destinations and products beyond Paro, Thimphu and Punakha means that numbers are heavily concentrated in these places leading to an impression of mass tourism.
Today, Bhutan is faced with very tough choices. One is to allow mass tourism to keep the many hotels viable and the other is to keep the current policy and risk quite a few hotels sinking along with the billions in loans with them.
However, in such a scenario a middle path now needs to be looked at. There is no way that Bhutan should adopt mass tourism just to save one sector, as big as it may be.
However, it may be time to tweak certain policies to encourage higher quality tourists, lengthen their stay in Bhutan and more importantly encourage them to move outside Paro, Thimphu and Punakha.
In that sense, a duration discount is the need of the hour along with developing tourism products outside these places. Special discounts could even be given for going to less visited places.
There is no point marketing Paro and Punakha, but it is time to also market these lesser known destinations. The world is fed up of over tourism and so Bhutan has to leverage itself as a destination that is the opposite of mass tourism and yet affordable.
“To travel is to live.” — Hans Christian
