The Tourism Council of Bhutan (TCB) has requested the Lonely Planet and Pacific Area Travel Writers Association (PATWA) for an extension of the best travel destination 2020 recognition awarded to Bhutan, until 2021.
Bhutan was named the Lonely Planet Country of 2020 and recognised as the Best Travel Destination for Happy Tourism for 2020 by PATWA.
These recognitions were good publicity for Bhutan. Lonely Planet is the largest and most popular travel guidebook publisher while PATWA is a professional organisation of travel writers.
TCB says because of the global coronavirus pandemic, Bhutan will not be able to benefit from this recognition, as 2020 is likely to be a no travel year. TCB says an extension of the recognitions until 2021 would ensure Bhutan would not miss out on the benefits of the recognitions. The TCB Director General, Dorji Dhradhul shared this at the Tourism Flagship meeting with the Prime Minister on April 15.
TCB’s request to Lonely planet and PATWA is an extension of the recognition until 2021 or a mention of Bhutan being 2020’s number one travel destination along with the country chosen for 2021.
According to the TCB, the two organisations have stated that they will get back to the TCB.
TCB says the impact of the global pandemic on tourism revenue will be immense. The TCB had projected around 324,000 tourists to visit the country in 2020. But only around 22,000 tourists had visited Bhutan until early March. This is only six per cent of the total projection.
Last year, Bhutan saw almost 316,000 tourists and generated gross revenue of close to 89 million US dollars.
While the loss in terms of revenue may be huge, the TCB says that they are looking forward to coming out of this crisis without any major impact.
TCB Director said during the on-going travel ban, they would be working towards presenting the Kingdom of Bhutan as the most exclusive travel destination in the world with reinforced tourism policy of High Value Low Volume.
Phub Gyem
