The spectacular coastline of tourism hub Cox's Bazar, adorned with the world's longest unbroken beach has been buzzing in the last couple of days thanks to the weekly holiday over the weekend melding with Christmas on Sunday - a national holiday - leading to a very busy time for the tourism sector, as well as the many ancillary businesses that tend to spring up in busy tourist spots.
Tourist police along with the district administration anticipated the surge, allowing them to take timely measures to scale up the security for the revellers.
Hotel authorities said some 90 percent of their rooms are booked, with people arriving, entourage after entourage, to visit this magnificent beach since Thursday afternoon.
The overcrowding of tourists from several parts of the country was caused by the government’s weekends on December 23, 24 and the Christmas Day on December 25.
Visiting several spots and residential hotels, the UNB correspondent observed a huge crowd of tourists at the beach, while in some sort of peripheral vision, we could see that some people were rushing with their luggage, their valuables from one hotel to another, as whatever rooms were left kept flying off the shelves.
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Those who managed rooms were found enjoying with their dear and near ones at the Inani and Himchhari beaches, or in the Buddhist Temples of Ramu, and even Saint Martin's, the coral island, and Adhinath Temple Maheshkhali.
Mohammad Foez, manager of the exquisitely named ‘Hotel Of The President’, said although tourist season started with the beginninging of the December every year, they got a poor response from the tourists this year.
“At the end of the month all the rooms of our hotel have already been booked and we would be able to recover our loss,” he said.
Anowar Kamal, president of ‘Tour Operator Association of Cox’s Bazar’, said there had been an adverse business for the past few days but with the overflow of tourists the beach city got to work up a head of momentum, that it could hopefully now use without hesitation.
Sherin Alam, assistant superintendent of tourist police (Cox’s Bazar Zone), hopes to see tens of thousands of tourists visit Cox's beach city over 'the long weekend'.
“Several teams of tourist police have been working to ensure security of the tourists and we are always vigilant,” he said.
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Masum Billah, an executive magistrate of the district administration, said they have always been alert for the sake of security of the tourists and keeping an eye on excessive prices of all things including foods.
