Tourists visiting Bhutan continue to increase but those coming for the Paro tshechu have significantly dropped this year say tourism officials. From January 2007 till March 2007 so far, about 3,706 tourists visited the country compared with about 2,362 tourists during the same months last year. This year, March alone accounted for about 2,449 tourists of which 1,755 came to witness the Paro tshechu, which begins on March 29. Last year more than 2,500 tourists came to witness the Paro tshechu in April 2007 out of about 3,393 who visited the country that month.
"A lot of tourists are unable to come to the country because of the accommodation problem," said Thinley W Dorji, adding that the present infrastructure was limited and those that were being built were not coming up fast enough. "Sometimes our clients have to put up in substandard hotels," he said. Standard
hotels like the Druk in Thimphu had all its 52 rooms booked since March
23.
He said that although tourists filled in the seats of the additional flights while flying into the country, the planes literally flew out empty. "We have to think about all the 114 seats on the plane," Tshering Penjor told Kuensel adding that tour operators normally planned their clients' flight schedule a day prior to the festivals and a day after it. "They should consider planning their tourists' flight coinciding with our normal schedule." Deepak Tamang of Raven tours and treks who has been in the business for only about a year said that getting air tickets was more difficult for new tour operators. "Unlike the established companies we don't have agents abroad to market our packages and confirm the number of tourists that would visit," said Deepak Tamang. "I bring in only a fixed number of tourists whose accommodations have been assured," said Deepak Tamang, who is expecting to bring about 15 tourists this season and about 100 for the whole year. Another newcomer in the business, Dorji, who runs the Golden Temple Tours and Treks prefers to bring in tourists during the lean season. "That is the only time most good hotel rooms are easily available and getting air tickets is not a problem," said Dorji, who brought in about six tourists in 2006.
|