The influx of  foreign tourist to the country has rise and around  20 lakh guest  visited the country during last five years, Bangladesh immigration sources said.

The inbound tourist however contributed over Tk  12787 crore during the period.

A total of 1.35 lakh tourist visited in 2021 and 1.81 also visited its previous 2020 period, record kept by the immigration police revealed.

Industry insiders have attributed such a growth mainly to business travellers and foreigners working in Bangladesh or engaged in humanitarian activities as the pandemic had barred leisure tourists from entering the country.

In 2020 and 2021, leisure tourists hardly visited the country owing to Covid-19. Those who came to the country were foreigners who work in Bangladesh on tourist visas, non-resident Bangladeshis and business travelers.

In the meantime, Bangladesh Tourism Board has not updated data on international tourists after December 2021, according to sources knowledgeable about the matter.

To regularly update data of tourist arrivals in the country, the tourism board is now willing to develop a software with the assistance of the special branch of Bangladesh police, emulating the models of countries such as India, the Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

In 2020, the inbound tourism sector suffered a 35% negative growth year-on-year.

Despite its vast potential, Bangladesh could not yet become a popular destination for foreign tourists in comparison to its neighbouring countries owing to poor tourism and airport infrastructure, complex visa policies, social restrictions and a lack of comfortable transportation facilities, according to experts.

Bangladesh received three lakh in-bound tourists in 2019, the highest in its history since independence. The figures earlier were 2.48 lakh in 2018, 2.2 lakh in 2017, 1.69 lakh in 2016, 1.18 lakh in 2015.

In 2019, the number of Indian tourists was 270,024, or 89% of the total inbound tourists, according to the tourism board.

With the emergence of a rising upper- and middle-class in the country in the last 15-20 years and construction of hundreds of cottages, hotels and motels, local tourism has also had an uplift, he added.

Bangladesh Tourism Board is now working on preparing a master plan under the Seventh Five-Year Plan to develop the sector in the next 25 years.