The tourism industry – The bottom line to the top dollar “Dead flies on table, smell of rotten meat and poor cleanliness” is how an Austrian tourist described a top-notch hotel in Punakha. “Garbage and dogs in Paro” was a UK tourist’s complaint. “Too expensive – we got taken advantage off” was from a couple from the United States.

“The first guide was incompetent, the second did not know proper English,” said another foreign couple.

These are some of the views of the 2,013 tourists here in a survey by the Tourism Council of Bhutan (TCB) last year.

Most complaints were infrastructure related. Frequent ones were on bad public toilets, roads, Internet connectivity, food, dog care, garbage control, lack of souvenir shops, ATM facilities, information counters and poor Druk Air services.

“The main complaints against hotels were on poor hygiene, plumbing, hot water supply, food, mattresses, showers in bathroom and bathroom facilities,” said a TCB official.

Many tourists have found themselves lodged in sub standard hotels while paying for better facilities.

Around 9.6 percent tourists felt that they did not get value for money while 20.8 percent had no opinion.

“The emerging problem is that there is more focus by new players on quantity rather than quality, which can drive down a destination market,” said TCB joint director, Thuji Naidik.

TCB data shows that Bhutan has an “abysmally” low occupancy rate and about 42 new hotels are to be built this year. Most will be in the already saturated Thimphu-Paro region which, a TCB report points out, could ‘endanger future success of existing properties’.

In 2007, a record 62 more tourism licenses were issued, pushing the total to 343. But only 12 major operators handle 55.2 percent of the tourists.

Indicating a poor revisit attraction, 89.7% were first time visitors, primarily because of the culture-heavy nature of Bhutanese tourism and limited festivals. “We need to develop more of nature attraction and adventure sports facilities, so that more of them come back,” said a TCB official.

While other western regions got heavy tourist inflow, other places like Tsirang, Sarpang, Dagana, Pemagatshel and Samtse did not get a single tourist because of poor accessibility. Others like Lhuenste, Zhemgang and Gasa suffered from low number of visits, the report said.  Source: Kuenselonline