Abstract

Although multifaceted problems are causing the frustrating scenario of the country’s tourism sector, Bangladesh has the potentials to develop its tourism sector and earn huge foreign currency and generate employment opportunities like the neighboring countries, such as India, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal who attract substantial number of tourists every year and thus generates huge amount of foreign currencies. The paper looks at different preferences of the tourist and examines the tour intention in selecting different tour destination. The study utilizes both exploratory and empirical research approach. The study collects data through interview with a structured self-administered questionnaire from 146 tourists, in utilizing convenient sampling technique. A multiple regression model was estimated to examine the effects of different factors on the tourists tour intention where nine factors related to different aspects of tourism such as service quality, natural beauty, known destination, convenient lodging, adventure, security, effective and efficient transportation, safe and quality food and shopping facility were used as indigenous variables where tour intention was used as exogenous variable of the model.  The regression result shows that Service quality, Natural Beauty, Security and Shopping Facility are statistically significant indicating 24.6% of the variation in explaining the intention to select a tour destination in Bangladesh. The study outlines some policy implications.

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