Tourists are welcomed with ‘honey, turmeric & SIM cards’ in Bhutan after Covid-19!

On Friday, the 23rd foreigner to enter Bhutan since the Himalayan country reopened its borders after the Covid-19 outbreak more than two years ago came. Tourism is expected to aid in the region’s economy’s recovery, according to officials. The country, which is sandwiched between China and India and is famed for its natural beauty and ancient Buddhist culture, initially admitted rich tourists in 1974. It blocked its borders to travellers, a vital source of revenue, after finding its first instance of Covid-19 in March 2020.

With less than 800,000 inhabitants, the constitutional monarchy has recorded slightly more than 61,000 illnesses and 21 fatalities, but the $3 billion economy declined over the previous two fiscal years, pushing more people into poverty. The Director General of the Tourism Council of Bhutan (TCB), Dorji Dhradhul, announced that tourism represented more than simply financial benefit for his organisation after greeting the first travellers to the country’s lone international airport in Paro, near to the capital city of Thimphu.

He asserted that the tiny country wanted ‘very much to be a part of the global globe’.  Speaking to Reuters while in Bhutan, he stated, ‘We feel that via tourism we can achieve that… take use of their support and goodwill’. According to the officials, every visitor who arrived on the first flight from Kathmandu in neighbouring Nepal received a gift of a local SIM card as well as miniature gifts of organic honey, tea, and Bhutanese turmeric.

In July, Bhutan raised its Sustainable Development Fee from the $65 it had been asking for three decades to $200 per visitor per night in an effort to draw in more affluent tourists. Officials asserted that the fees would be used to fund programmes such as tree planting, training for tourist staff, upkeep of hiking trails, reduction of reliance on fossil fuels, and electrification of transportation vehicles in an effort to balance out the carbon footprints of visitors.

315,600 visits, up 15.1% from the year before, were recorded in 2019, according to TCB statistics. Travelers contributed to the economy by spending an average of $84 million yearly in the three years prior to the epidemic.