Most of the rooms in more than five hundred hotels in Coxs Bazar remained empty during the Eid-ul-Azha holidays despite the discount offers on room rent from 40 to 60 per cent.
Industry experts blamed rainy weather and the suspension of tourist ship movement on Teknaf to Saint Martins route due to conflict inside Myanmar for the arrival of fewer tourists.
During several visits to hotels, guesthouses and cottages in the Kalatali area of the beach town from June 16 to 19, the correspondent found that 60 to 70 per cent of the rooms in most of the hotels were empty.
Various entertainment centres in the district, including Coxs Bazar to Teknaf Marine Drive, Buddhist temple in Ramu, Dulahajara Safari Park etc, were also found almost empty.
Fresh downstream areas of Sunamganj and Sylhet districts are being inundated with gushing waters from upstream areas in northeast India accompanied by downpours while the flood situation remains unchanged.
Though water levels in the district headquarters and the Surma River have decreased slightly as there was no rain since Wednesday night, but water level in Kushiyara has gone up, inundating new areas in the downstream of Sylhet, Sunamganj and Moulvibazar districts, official sources said.
Floodwater stranded some 18 lakh people in the two districts till 6pm today while the number was 14.5 lakh till Thursday afternoon.
Bangladesh foreign currency reserves went up by $318 million in the span of a week to hit $19.53 billion on June 19, central bank figures showed.
It was $19.21 billion on June 12.
The latest upward movement of the reserves will give much-needed relief to the US dollar supply, which has squeezed sharply in the last couple of years amid higher outflows against inflows.
Bangladesh has conveyed its concern to the Myanmar military and Arakan army with a strong note that there will be retaliation if they fire into the country territory further, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said today (20 June).
"Otherwise, we will respond to their firing. If we are attacked, we will respond to that attack," he told reporters replying to a query at his secretariat office.
Kamal said, "Myanmar has some internal crises and the country has different ethnic groups. There are conflicts among them…So far we heard that the Arakan army has grabbed many areas of the Arakan state. For this, many members of the Border Guard of Police [BGP] of Myanmar have fled and came to Bangladesh."