Any country may emerge as an attractive tourist’s destination through developing its infrastructure and creating newer attractions for visitors and Bangladesh has ample scope for being such a destination, observed a top regional tourism official, who was on a short visit to Dhaka recently.

“I found Bangladesh people very nice and helpful. So I think tourists would come to this country, if infrastructure and other tourism-related services are developed adequately,” Siew-Kheng Kang, regional director, South Asia, Middle East and Africa, Singapore Tourism Board (STB), told The Daily Star.

During her short visit, she attended a children’s art competition where the tiny tots expressed about how they imagined of Singapore.

Besides this tour, Kang had come here four to five times.

The STB official laid emphasis on creation of new things for which the tourists would feel attracted to visit.”At first you should create a reason for the tourists to visit your country because they will not come if they fail to find strong reasons behind their tours,” she said.

When asked about the Bangladeshis visiting Singapore, Kang said most of them go there for visiting purpose, while marketing, business activities, conferences as well as physical treatment are other reasons for their visit.

“Always we try to create new things. A tourist does not find the same thing when he or she visits Singapore for the second time. This is a reason behind their tour of Singapore more and more,” she went on.

She said in South Asia, Bangladeshi nationals rank third after India and Sri Lanka in terms of visiting Singapore. In 2006, around 64,000 Bangladeshi visitors went to Singapore with a 10 per cent growth rate, while during the January-August period this year more than 50, 000 tourists went there.

On the prospect of Bangladesh tourism, Kang said Bangladesh with its 140 million population is a growing market as its economy is growing.

She attributed success of Singapore in tourism to creation of newer attractions, gorgeous shopping centres, good security and good transportation.

Responding to a query about what Bangladesh can learn from Singapore to develop tourism sector, she said, “Problems of a country are unlike others. So Bangladesh should detect its own problems and solve it to build itself as a tourist destination”.