The 11th version of International Travel Fair organised by The Bangladesh Monitor, the Premier travel publication of the country, is scheduled to be held from March 19 -22, 2014 .

Tourism fair has now-a-days become an important medium to market tourism products and establish contacts between major players engaged in tourism industry. When Bangladesh Monitor took the initiative to organize Tourism Fair, there was no track record. No one in the travel industry, not even national tourism organization (NTO), thought of event like that.

Despite enormous potentials with various attractions, Bangladesh tourism was going nowhere. There was no marketing effort by any one. In such a situation, The Bangladesh Monitor created this event to provide an opportunity to showcase tourism attractions and a wide range of products and services in the travel trade, available in the country.

So, in the history of Bangladesh tourism, DTM occupy an exalted position. The Bangladesh Monitor, the top travel publication of the country, played a pioneering role and created this event in 2002 out of nothing

There was no track record for such an event. Yet, the effort was crowned with instant success—both in respect of response and establishing contact between major players engaged in tourism trade from home and abroad.

The response was so great that soon The Bangladesh Monitor obliged to make DTM an annual event. The success of our effort has encouraged others to follow the path and organize tourism fairs.

However, despite entry of a number of other players in the field, DTM remains the most well organized event, offering participants to get value of their money. Staged annually, it is providing unique opportunity to meet, network, negotiate, conduct business and stay abreast with the latest developments in the global industry in general and Bangladesh travel industry in particular.

In recent years, tourism in Bangladesh has achieved fairly good growth. The growth in the tourism industry is continuing and creating exciting new opportunities for further growth. With the change of fundamental consumer tastes, with a growing preference for diverse types of holiday experience, tourism in Bangladesh stand to gain significantly.

Traditional, tour packages like city, beach etc. will remain important, but the higher levels of growth will be in more differentiated holiday sectors-- Geo and Eco tourism. Bangladesh has attractive Geo and Eco tourism attractions. These specialized sectors also tend to attract less price sensitive customers, prepared to pay a premium for a great holiday experience.

Although Bangladesh is not currently included in itineraries with neighboring countries, some tour operators are actively promoting “Bangladesh Only" itineraries of various duration. Albeit there is large scope to showcase wide variety of Bangladesh products, marketing is currently done on a very limited scale. So, there exist great scope and opportunity of doing business.

DTM aims to encourage every travel company, operator, hotel and destination to take real action and show consumers that Bangladesh has attractive tourism products. We are working to ensure exhibitor and visitor satisfaction.

Post show research has revealed that DTM has received very high satisfaction levels from both exhibitors and visitors.

The 11th edition of DTM is expected to attract more exhibitors than before. So, it will provide great opportunity to showcase the products and services, both for domestic and regional markets.