No free visits, please!
Bhutan opened its doors to tourists in 1974. But the protective Bhutanese psyche kept the kingdom jealously guarded and this is visible in the controlled tourism policy. To avoid unwanted side effects the government has adopted a policy of "high value low volume' tourism, restricting the number of tourists by charging a high tarrif.
By the late 1980s, roughly 3,000 tourists were visiting the country leaving behind just US $2 million in revenue, according to the Tourism Authority of Bhutan statistics. Fearing that numbers were becoming unsustainable while degradation was increasing, the government raised the tarrif in 1989. That year the number of visitors halved but revenue decreased only slightly. Three years later, absolute numbers were back. In 1997, some 5, 361 visitors entered the country.
To reduce the adverse impacts of tourism, the ministry of trade and industry has drawn guidelines which include substitution of fuelwood by using liquefied petroleum gas or kerosene, construction of permanent campsites and full retrieval of non-biodegradable wastes.
In the belief that there is a cost for everything, the government believes that it is justified in seeking compensation for foregoing the exploitation of Bhutan's natural resources. On this basis, there are plans afoot to levy an environmental fee to all visitors to Bhutan, which will be used to underwrite costs of providing ecologically-benign facilities and general maintenance and cleaner services.
In the future, says Kinlay Dorjee, country representative, World WIde Fund for Nature-Bhutan, tourism will have to become an important service industry. "There is a lot the local people can avail of,' he adds. Says Sangay Wangchuk of the Nature Conservation Section, "Culture erosion is the cost of development but we will have to bear with it (tourism).'