DEVELOPMENT OF TOURISM IN SAINT MARTIN’S ISLAND: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY

Abstract

Tourism has identified as a major industry, which is growing very fast in many countries of the world. Bangladesh is a developing country and going to be a middle income country where tourism can play a vital role in its GDP growth. Tourism plays a significant role for the socio-economic development of an area or a region of a country. Tourism has a bright prospect in Bangladesh but it has growing very slowly. Government of Bangladesh has taken many initiatives for the development of tourism industries in our country. Bangladesh is a wonderful country with a lot of tourist spots having scopes to develop different types of tourism. Among all the forms of tourism; beach tourism is very much popular and one of the prominent tourist attractions in Bangladesh at present. The World’s longest unbroken sandy sea beach at Cox’s Bazar (120 km/75 mile long) and the only beautiful coral island at Saint Martin’s is now the most popular tourist destination of Bangladesh. Saint Martin’s Island has found the blue water into the Bay of Bengal. For this reason, now Saint Martin’s Island has been identified as a popular tourist destination. There are about 7,000-8,000 tourists visit St. Martin’s Island every day in the tourist season (October-March) only for the attractions of this coral scenario and significant rural life styles. Saint Martin’s Island is a beautiful creation of Almighty Allah. The island is popularly known as ‘pearl in the sea’. People of Saint Martin’s Island called it ‘Narikel Jinjira’ or ‘Jinjira Dwip’. The surrounding coral reef of Saint Martin’s Island has an extension named ‘Chera Dwip’-which is a part of Saint Martin’s Island but separated during high tides from the main land. There are nine distinct administrative Villages, which is locally known as Para within the island. The island is a Union of Teknaf Upazila under Cox’s Bazar District of Bangladesh. Researcher has identified some problems for tourism development in this island. The identifying challenges for tourism development of Saint Martin’s Island are: Tourists cannot visit this island smoothly round the year; except tourist season (from October-March), because full time ferry services didn’t continuing in the whole year. The internal transport and road network is not well for travelling of the tourists. Pure drinking water facility is not available in everywhere of the island as salinity is increasing day by day. Large number of permanent population and also a huge number of Rohingya peoples regular activities has pollutes the environment of the island. Security for the tourists is not sufficient. The island has lack of recreational facilities and also insufficient modern tourism development facilities. As a result, the incoming rate of foreign tourists of Saint Martin’s Island is decreasing day by day. There is no Bank or ATM Booth in Saint Martin’s Island. As a result, tourists have to go to the Bank or ATM Booth in Teknaf or Cox’s Bazar in emergency cases. The research ‘Development of Tourism in Saint Martin’s Island: An Ethnographic Study’ has been divided into two linkages; firstly, tourism development scenario in St. Martin’s Island and secondly, ethnographic study of the peoples of St. Martin’s Island. This research has conducted on the basis of primary and secondary data. Primary data were generated mainly conducted of household survey by using a pre-structured questionnaire among 220 household’s head of St. Martin’s Island and also 100 domestic and 38 foreign tourists. The stratified random sampling survey method has used for data collection.

This is an ethnographic study on Saint Martin’s Island. This research mainly adopted Participant Observation Method. Ethnography is the description of the culture of people and culture is the way of life. Peoples of Saint Martin’s Island are in Muslim Community. Fishing is their main profession. Agriculture is the second and business is the third profession; which has treated as supplementary profession. Ethnography is dealing with people and Tourism is also dealing with people. Between the two disciplines main focus is people. So, we can say that, there is a linkage between ethnography and tourism. About the linkage of tourism and ethnography; American Anthropologist and Tourism specialist Edward Burner said that, “Tourism has less to do with what other people are really like and more to do with how we imagine them to be and in this respect is like any other form of representation, including Ethnography (E. Bruner, 1989).” For visiting huge number of tourists; Saint Martin’s Island are facing the major anthropogenic threats for the environment. After realizing this situation, Govt. of Bangladesh declared St Martin’s Island as an Ecologically Critical Area (ECA) in 1999 and Environmental Endangered Zone (EEZ) in 2005. Due to the geographical location of the Bay of Bengal, the island suffers from devastating tropical cyclones frequently; which has identified as an impact for the development of tourism in Saint Martin’s Island. If local authority and govt. should take necessary initiatives in planned way for the development of tourism in Saint Martin’s Island; then it will identify as number -1 tourist spot of Bangladesh and as well as south Asia and south-east Asia within a short time. To achieve 8.25% GDP growth in COVID-19 period, it’s a great challenge for Bangladesh; where tourism sector especially in beach tourism of Cox’s Bazar and the only coral island- Saint Martin’s can plays a significant role.