{"id":1129,"date":"2011-05-18T10:08:54","date_gmt":"2011-05-18T04:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/?p=1129"},"modified":"2011-05-18T10:08:54","modified_gmt":"2011-05-18T04:08:54","slug":"why-it-costs-200-a-day-in-bhutan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/18\/why-it-costs-200-a-day-in-bhutan\/","title":{"rendered":"Why it Costs $200 a Day in Bhutan?"},"content":{"rendered":"

MAY 17, 2011\u00a0By\u00a0Mary Kay Magistad<\/a> for the\u00a0THE WORLD<\/a> (PRI):\u00a0Download MP3<\/a><\/p>\n

Bhutanese are proud of their traditional Buddhist culture \u2013 a culture tracing centuries back to Tibet, which has given Bhutan both its written language and its strain of Buddhism. As an independent country, Bhutan has been able to preserve its traditional culture far better than Tibet. And it wants to share that culture \u2013 with a select few, well-heeled tourists.<\/p>\n

Many climb \u2013 though, in sneakers or hiking books rather than in heels \u2013 to the Tiger\u2019s Nest in Paro, a Buddhist monastery with gilded roofs that seems to hover ethereally above a sheer cliff face. The hike on steep forest trails winds past rhododendrons and ghostly Spanish moss. With the high altitude, it takes even a young, fit person a couple of hours to make the ascent \u2013 and that\u2019s before you get to the more than 700 stairs leading to the monastery at the end.<\/p>\n

A Different Kind of Tourist<\/h3>\n

But few of the foreign tourists on the trail when I visited \u2013 or in Bhutan in general \u2013 were young or fit. Many rode donkeys up, and used walking sticks to gradually make their way down. Not exactly the energetic young trekkers of Nepal \u2013 but then, Bhutan\u2019s tourists are different.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than 90 percent of the people who are coming now are over 56,\u201d says Kesang Wangdi, director-general of the Tourism Council of Bhutan. \u201cWe draw mostly from the older generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wangdi says that\u2019s partly because of Bhutan\u2019s unique and long-standing system of requiring visitors to spend at least $200 a day \u2013 paid in advance, by wire transfer, and covering hotel, meals, guide and transportation. It\u2019s Bhutan\u2019s way of keeping the impact from tourism low and earnings from it high. Next year, the tariff goes up to $250 a day. Wangdi acknowledges that this might skew the tourist base to an older, more affluent crowd, but he says \u2013 part of the allure of tourism in Bhutan is its exclusivity.<\/p>\n

\u201cBhutan can never afford to be a destination for mass tourism,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a small country. The environment is fragile. We are very conscious about protecting the environment, our way of life and ensuring that the development of tourism is sustainable. And those tourists who come, they have a holistic experience. You have a complete immersion in a different time, in a different culture. And the experience is authentic. It\u2019s not put on for show, and that, we\u2019d like to preserve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Growing Fast<\/h3>\n

But Bhutan is racing into the modern world, mass tourism or no. The capital, Thimpu, still feels like a big small town, with low-slung buildings, small shops, and an archery field at its center. But construction is everywhere, and the population is growing fast \u2013 from about 50,000 people five years ago, to almost double that number now.<\/p>\n

Bhutan is also increasingly connected with the outside world. It got its first television and Internet 12 years ago. But in a predominantly young country, with more than half the population under 25, a generation has now grown up, plugged-in. Meanwhile, previously inaccessible mountain villages are fast getting roads, electricity and mobile phones, and sending their young to bigger towns for the kind of education older Bhutanese never had a chance to get.<\/p>\n

This presents Bhutan\u2019s government with a quandary \u2013 how to preserve what is most essential, and most treasured, about Bhutan\u2019s traditional culture and values, while still embracing the aspects of modernity that allow Bhutan\u2019s economy \u2013 now largely dependent on foreign aid \u2013 to stand on its own and thrive?<\/p>\n

One answer to that question has been to expand hydropower capacity tenfold over 10 years, and sell it to neighboring India. A second answer has been to expand the tourism sector. An initial proposal was to set a target to more than quintuple tourist arrivals over the next two years \u2013 from about 40,000 last year to 250,000. When he heard that proposal, opposition party leader Tshering Tobgay pushed back hard.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo hundred thousand tourists a year is an unforgivable number, which will destroy the country,\u201d Tobgay says. \u201cWe have only 700,000 people in Bhutan, and most of the country\u2019s still rural. And we can\u2019t absorb those numbers without compromising who we are, and our lifestyle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some Bhutanese look at what they see as Nepal\u2019s pot-smoking, penny-pinching backpackers, and chaotic tourist quarter, and say that\u2019s exactly what they don\u2019t want. Tobgay is less concerned about that than about sheer numbers.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it doesn\u2019t matter if we have backpackers in Bhutan, as long as the numbers are controlled,\u201d he says. \u201cEven with \u2018high value\u2019 tourists, Bhutan cannot absorb 500,000 tourists, even if they each pay $500 a day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doubling the Number of Tourists<\/h3>\n

In the end, the Bhutanese government set a target of merely doubling, rather than quintupling, the number of tourist arrivals over the next couple of year. The goal is also to spread tourist visits more evenly throughout the year, and throughout more of the country, bringing revenue to villages so more villagers have incentive to stay home rather than migrate to cities and towns.<\/p>\n

So Bhutan is now looking for a new kind of tourist \u2013 not just a silver-haired cultural tourist, coming for a brief one-off visit to see festivals and Buddhist monasteries, but repeat visitors coming for conferences, spa vacations or ecotourism and trekking. They\u2019re looking for more tourists like Meredith Campbell of Boulder, Colorado, half of a young backpacking couple I met at Bhutan\u2019s crowded international airport.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur trip was excellent. Couldn\u2019t have been better,\u201d she says. But the cost, she says, did weigh in to how long they stayed. \u201cIt was definitely a factor. We knew it was going to be one of the more expensive places to travel. And being younger, and maybe not having as much savings, it was a choice to come here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Campbell is also a model tourist for Bhutan in that, unlike most of the older tourists who come here, she and her partner plan to come back. As she and I chat, her partner sits near the backpacks, balancing a laptop on his legs. Campbell says he\u2019s writing an email to their guide, to set up a remote mountain hike next year, on the trail of the Yeti, the abominable snow monster. I remind her that the minimum spending requirement is going up to $250 a day next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did hear that,\u201d Campbell replies with a laugh. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to deter us from coming back.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MAY 17, 2011\u00a0By\u00a0Mary Kay Magistad for the\u00a0THE WORLD (PRI):\u00a0Download MP3 Bhutanese are proud of their traditional Buddhist culture \u2013 a culture tracing centuries back to Tibet, which has given Bhutan both its written language and its strain of Buddhism. As an independent country, Bhutan has been able to preserve its traditional culture far better than … Continue reading Why it Costs $200 a Day in Bhutan?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,14,15,16],"tags":[205,219,254],"class_list":["post-1129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bhutan-guest","category-sustainable-development","category-sustainable-travel","category-tourism-bhutan","tag-bhutan","tag-bhutan-travel","tag-bridge-to-bhutan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bridgetobhutan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}