A new tourism law for Bhutan
7 July 2005 - The tourism sector will soon have clear, comprehensive and transparent rules to ensure its healthy and sustainable development.
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A sustainable tourism legislation is being currently formulated by an international legal expert from World Tourism Organisation and will amend or replace the current rules and regulations which, according to tourism officials, are vague and difficult to enforce.”We want to rationalise and replace them, make them more comprehensive and user friendly,” said the Director General of Tourism Department, Lhatu Wangchuk.
The legislation will spell out the dos and don’ts, the code of conduct, the ethics of tourism and professionalism to various stakeholders of the industry and anticipate the future development of the sector bringing along employment opportunities, investment, and production.
According to the legal expert, John J Downes, the existing law does not cover the actual situation in the tourism industry and it does not anticipate the future development of tourism.
“First of all, without legislation there is no proper framework for developing tourism and, secondly, Bhutan is committed to joining the World Trade Organisation and that provides both opportunities as well as potential threats from competitors. We want to create a highly professionalised quality sector which will need some protection at first, but will nonetheless compete.”
To make the industry highly professionalised, which in turn will draw the attention of young people as wanted by the government the legislation will require the travel service providers to meet certain criteria to be officially recognised as travel service providers.
“To regulate the industry, so that the goal of high value, low impact tourism is achieved a strong and independent tourism authority, working in a non-governmental way should be present,” he said.
Bhutanese people, said John J Downes, are an asset to the industry but the level of service skills and confidence in delivering services was generally poor. “There is a potential problem of over supply of hotels and we are looking at rules to encourage not more hotels and beds but better facilities and for that we have to create an investment friendly environment,” he said.
The legislation would also encourage local communities to have a say and to participate and provide tourism services and products so that they also benefit from tourism.
“In keeping with the decentralization process in the country the legislation will work at what should be done at the dzongkhag, geog and national level and get these three levels and the private and the public sectors to cooperate,” said John J Downes. “There should be cross government cooperation also,” he said.
The legislation will also take into consideration Bhutan’s commitment to the environment conservation and protection.
“Most environmentalist conclude that there should be no tourism but Bhutan combines environment protection and conservation with economic opportunities for the people,” said John J Downes. “The way we hope to work in framing the legislation should be an example to many other countries.”
The director general of Department of Tourism, Lhatu Wangchuk, said that the legislation was important because it would provide a legal basis to the tourism policy and the tourism master plan which is in the process of being drafted.
“We need to provide direction to the stakeholders of the industry because they get into all sorts of businesses, either knowingly or unknowingly,” he said adding that the legislation will provide a way to deal with undercutting happening in the industry.
The legislation will be ready by the beginning of next year.
By Kinley Wangmo