The Bhutanese are trying to preserve their culture by keeping tourism to a minimum.Credit: iStock
It costs almost $300 a day to be in Bhutan as a tourist. Just to be there. That's before you've bought any food or paid any entry fees or organised transport or even found yourself a place to sleep for the night.
If you want to be a tourist in Bhutan these days, since the country revamped its Sustainable Development Fee program earlier this year, it will cost you $US200 – or about $A300 – for every day that you stay. With nothing included. A week-long trip will cost more than $2000 in fees, just to be there.
That has to make Bhutan the most expensive country in the world, in terms of visas. Even Equatorial Guinea, which charges visitors almost $800 for a single-entry visa, can't compete (unless you plan to visit Bhutan for only one or two days, which seems unlikely).
A village in Bhtan.Credit: iStock
So, what gives? How can a country get away with gouging tourists like that? How can it expect anyone to actually show up and pay the fee? What's the sell? What does Bhutan have that would make a $300-a-day entry fee seem worthwhile?
Well, here's the interesting bit. Whatever it does have, Bhutan is not saying. Because it doesn't really care if you visit or you don't.
I was in the kingdom recently as a guest of G Adventures (and my Sustainable Development Fee was waived by the Bhutanese government because I was there to cover the story of a new long-distance hiking trail). During my stay, I sat down with the Bhutanese Prime Minister, Lotay Tshering, to ask about his nation, about its attractions, and in particular the new $300-a-day entry fee (which, up until September this year, was USD65 per day).
I asked: how do you plan to sell your country to the world?
"I'm not here to sell Bhutan," Tshering said. "I'm just here to tell you what we are. We know what we want. We know what we can offer. We have a clear path as to how we should preserve our country."
Bhutan does tourism in a way pretty much no other country does. The fundamental drive here isn't to make money from tourists, despite that hefty Sustainable Development Fee, and despite the fact Bhutan is still considered a developing nation, with a GDP that puts it far down the world rankings, level with the likes of Suriname and Greenland.
"We're not looking at tourism as a money-making exercise," Tshering said. "We will not count on tourism as a way to generate income for the country. That's absolutely not correct. Any revenue [from the sustainability fee] will be reinvested in tourism products – 100 per cent, if not more. So, one traveller will spend, the next traveller will benefit."
Here is a country, essentially, that is upfront about the fact that it doesn't really want tourists. Or at least, not many tourists. If you do decide to visit Bhutan you will be very welcome, of course. You will be treated well. But you will have to pay a lot of money for that privilege.
The idea here is to preserve Bhutan the way it is. That means preserving its environment – the country is one of only two that has declared itself carbon negative – as well as preserving its culture. And the way to do that is to keep visitor numbers down.
"Our culture is very, very sensitive," Tshering told me. "Very special. We would like to keep it this way and pass it on to the next generation. We don't want to block visitors from experiencing what we are experiencing, but yes, that is one of the reasons behind the [new fee] policy.
"We [also] want to make sure our environment is as pristine or better than it is now. In the last 10 years I can see it degrading. So, we need to be serious on preserving what we have. In the last few years we started experiencing a little bit the side effects of mass tourism. We don't want to use tourism to generate revenue in any form."
Bhutan's plan is pretty simple: high value, low volume. Create a system of tourism that will only appeal to the few. That is, either those who really, really want to be there, or those who don't care how much it costs. Committed visitors, or rich visitors.
The Bhutanese government no doubt looks at famously over-touristed places such as Amsterdam, Barcelona, Kyoto, Venice and Bali and thinks: no thanks. And they've done something about it.
It's a blunt instrument, but an effective one. How many people are going to spend $300 a day just on entry fees? Think of what you could get for $300 a day in neighbouring India, or in Thailand, or Vietnam, or even Japan.
A lot. A whole lot.
Bhutan is the first country to do this so overtly, to protect itself from the wider world by pricing it out, but I don't think it will be the last. As global tourism picks up again after COVID-19 border closures, as the world's population swells and we all start to move around again en masse, other fragile destinations will have to combat the weight of excess numbers.
We all like to assume that as travellers we're doing a basic good for the world, that we're spreading money around and exchanging cultures and not just being dumb, destructive tourists. We assume destinations want us, regardless of how much money we have to spend. Travel is egalitarian – it's a great leveller.
But that's already not true in Bhutan. And the rest of the world will follow.
Email: b.groundwater@traveller.com.au
Instagram: instagram.com/bengroundwater
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