The ongoing unrest in Bangladesh has hit the tourism industry in Sikkim which was limping back after last year’s natural calamity and before Covid pandemic.
After the Centre’s decision in 2018 to allow Bangladeshi nationals to visit Sikkim, there had been a boom in the tourism sector of the northeast state.
After all, the destination is the nearest place for tourists from Bangladesh to visit snow-clad mountains.
In 2019, a year after the bar for Bangladeshi tourists was lifted, Sikkim received as many as 1.33 lakh foreign tourists.
“Among them, 60,542 tourists were from Bangladesh and 56,781 from Nepal,” said an official of Sikkim tourism department.
Sikkim tourism was severly hit by the glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) in October in 2023. However, flow of Bangladeshi tourists did not get affected.
"We received 40,597 Bangladeshi tourists. But this time, business related to our tourism sector has been badly affected because of the turmoil in Bangladesh. This year, only 27,126 tourists from Bangladesh visited our state until October,” said the official.
The hoteliers’ decision not to accommodate Bangladeshi nationals in Siliguri and Malda, the two main gateways for Sikkim-bound Bangladeshi tourists, in the backdrop of alleged atrocities on minorities in India’s eastern neighbour will have an adverse impact on Sikkim’s tourism business.
“In winter, hundreds of Bangladeshi tourists visit our state. They prefer to stay in Siliguri for a day before heading for Sikkim. But the ongoing crisis in Bangladesh and the Indian government’s decision to impose restrictions on issuing visas will result in a dull winter session this time,” said a hotel owner in Gangtok, the capital of the northeast state.
The situation in Bangladesh has also affected Darjeeling as travelers from Bangladesh prefer to cover Sikkim-Darjeeling circuit in one go, said a member of the hotel owners’ association in Darjeeling.
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