Analysis of Regional Tourists in Bhutan before Covid-19
Abstract
Bhutan has a unique policy of “high value, low impact”, towards tourism. The tourists visiting the country are divided into two forms, first are the ones who have been covered under the above-mentioned policy, whereas the second are the regional tourists, who are the tourists mainly from the three SAARC nations viz, India, Maldives and Bangladesh. As per the diplomatic agreement the visitors from these countries are exempted from the tourism policy and are considered to be of low value to the Bhutanese economy from the revenue and employment point of view. However, the regional tourists have been sharing a significant
share of more than 50% in the overall tourism in the kingdom before covid 19. With the global pandemic, the rationale of having regional tourists and creating appropriate policies to deal with them has been a point of deliberations now. The point of consideration has been about the way regional tourists can affect the hotel industry in Bhutan as it contributes to the increase in the revenue for the country. As a result, our country can be able to generate more revenue from regional tourists by encouraging a greater number of hotels as tourism is the second highest revenue-generating factor in Bhutan. This study attempts to analyse the impact of regional tourist on the hotel industry in Bhutan and explores the mediating role of the government policies. For the purpose of the study, a quantitative analysis has been carried out on the hotels of three most visited cities in Bhutan i.e., Thimphu, Paro and Phuentsholing using the snowball method. From these analyses we were able to come up with the conclusion of how the increasing number of regional tourists are having the impact on the hotel industry based on the factors like government policies, e-technology and capacity of the hotels.
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