A Study on the Atghar Kuriana and Vimruli Tourist Destination ’ s Challenges to Sustainability

The study mainly focuses on the limitations and challenges of Atghar Kuriana and Vimruli as a tourism destination and local communities ’ attitude toward tourism. Actually, there is a little study about this amazing tourist destination, though it is an emerging tourist destination in Bangladesh. This study was conducted following survey research methodology; a separate survey questionnaire for tourists and local communities were developed to serve study objectives. The survey was conducted using both open and close-ended questionnaires. This study uncovered that tourists who visited there have bewitched enjoying the natural beauty, boating, zig zag canals, row upon row boats loaded with guava, amra and lemon but dissatisfaction over sanitation facility, quality restaurants and cottages, recreational and entertainment facilities, safety security, eve teasing, sound pollution as well as actually no authority to look after the overall activity. Moreover, there is no difference both gender and civil status in terms of visitors ’ response to destination facilities as well as visitors ’ knowledge on sustainable tourism, but collectively gender civil status revealed a significant difference. I hope the results of the survey might be worthwhile to policy makers, private entrepreneurs and marketers while formulating their policies, to attract local and foreign tourists and also to ensure sustainability of this amazing tourist destination.

sources hidden in Atghar Kuriana Guava Garden and Vimruli Floating Market, Bangladesh might earn a huge amount of fresh currency; reduce poverty and unemployment by creating private entrepreneurs, employment opportunities.
The southern part of Bangladesh is aesthetically embedded in the beauty of nature, especially rivers, canals, boats, guava, amra and greenery and it's the ornament of southern residents of Bangladesh.The mild and temperate climate is also the characteristics of the southern region and Atghar Kuriana Guava Garden and Vimruli Floating Market are the reflection of the southern region.Atghar Kuriana and Vimruli is not only legendary for its guava and amra but also the natural beauty it possessed.The lucrative attractions of this garden are Greenery, innumerable zigzag canals, row upon row guava and amra garden across a wide area, floating hundreds of boats loaded with guava, amra and lemon, etc. competing to sell their products to wholesalers along with tourists, scenario of hanging hundreds of bats on the rain tree above the canal, mild along with a temperate climate are the major tourist attractions of this garden.Besides, you can make a journey to dreamy places like Sarsina darbar sharif, nursery and dockyards on the bank of river "Sandha", Guthia mosque, Durgasagor Dighi, the house of poet mukundo das.These places are very close to this garden just need a bit reverse U turn travel.Guava and Amra cultivation are major occupation here.Rivers, canals, low land topography and climate are very congenial to farm guava and amra.The flavor and taste of guava and amra here are quite different from other regions.It's really awesome.Boats are the only way for picking up and selling guava to wholesaler and tourists.Row upon row loaded guava boats adjacent to one another and competition among boatmen to fasten their boats better places create amazing scenario.Besides, one can hire a boat and easily roam around the garden and thorough out the canals.It will give you incredible pleasure/romance that beyond one's imagination.The garden is actually stretched out the border area of three districts respectively Pirojpur, Jhalokhathi and Barishal districts.It spreads over thirty-one thousand acres of twenty-six villages of three districts.The best time for travelling is from early July to early September.The best ways to roam around the garden is a engineless boat.There are different types of boat to roam, but the most common boats are pansy boat, dinghy boat, sailboat and kosa boat, etc.The best ways to go Atghar Kuriana and Vimruli floating bazar from Barishal, Banaripara or Jhalokhathi are hiring microbus, bikes or Mahindra; from Nesarabad is hiring engineless boats or auto rickshaws, etc.However, there is actually no study on this emerging destination.So I guess it's inevitable to find the limitations and challenges to ensure its sustainability as a tourist destination and further aims are: To identify visitors' travel conduct and visitors' knowledge on sustainable/eco-tourism and "How does local community perceive the tourism"?Is there a difference both gender and civil status in satisfaction statement to the destination amenities and visitors' knowledge on sustainable tourism?

Review of Literature Tourism
Travelling for pleasure, refreshment, adventure, business, education and therapeutic purposes not a recent phenomenon; it is a prehistoric and strong passion of human beings.People travel from one place to another place for different purposes.According to Wahab, (1977) tourism is a deliberate voluntarily short-term movement of people from their usual habitats to others places like from province to province, or a country, even in a mainland with the motive of satisfying off time essentials and that travel must be free from taking part in compensated jobs.There is a distinction between travel and tourism.Tourism encompasses activities undertaken by human beings form the desire of travel from their usual living places to another place with a cluster of objectives for taking part in that visiting (excluding travelling for work), and that travel might fulfill the conditions of tourism (Tribe, 1997).The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO, 2008) defined Tourism is a displacement of individuals to destinations or sites external their general living area/areas, actions and behaviors undertaken during their displacement covering social, economic and cultural phenomena for personal, business/professional motives for not more than one succeeding twelve-month period.The world travel and tourism council (WTTC, 2021) described tourism is the phenomenon which teaches us to be tolerant, flexible, open-minded and most of all, it makes us humble in addition to storyteller; By crossing boundaries and oceans, we achieve right viewpoints, ins and outs knowledge of different landscapes & languages, also first-hand experience on wild animals in their actual habitat, discover a region's history, and gain knowledge a great deal more about others.Leiper, (1979) defined tourism is a multi-dimensional and multi-faceted phenomena of a wide combination of individuals, business, organizations and places to deliver a travel experience which ultimately results in various different economic activities and covers many spheres of our lives.

Sustainability and Sustainable Tourism
Sustainability has now become buzzword across the world.We want sustainability of almost everything.Waver concluded (2005) if the growing interests and the diversifying nature of tourism continue, it's not wise to let it go without considering its merits and demerits on environment, economy and social cultural paradigm and it's inevitable to produce experts in this industry who can master sustainability issue on their day-to-day operation and policy making decisions.Because, it is not beyond contention; it's a recognized resource-intensive industry.To deal with sustainable tourism, we need to discuss sustainability.The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987) sets four basic principles for sustainability: (1) secure the environment (biodiversity) and traditions (2) retain the crucial ecological processes (3) bridge and ensure community partnership (4) wisely use and conserve of limited resources in order to ensure that productivity can be sustained for lineages.Considering the WCED principles for sustainability, UNWTO states sustainable tourism has to ensure: Effective employ of ecological facilities that form a foremost particle in tourism flowering; Recognize the socio-cultural purity of local residents, safeguard their hand-made creatures and living cultural heritages and traditional values as well as support for intercultural understanding and tolerance; Guarantee operable, extended fiscal benefits, generating socio-economic benefits to all stakeholders that are equitably disposed and furnishing to poorness easing; Maintain a standard amount of tourist contentment and secure a pictorial knowledge to tourists, beautifying their realization about sustainability issues and promoting sustainable tourism practices.Tourists' actions, behaviors and associated activities are also responsible for climate change and global warming; it's the most vulnerable sectors for climate change and global warming and requires urgent action for sustainability (The United Nations Environment programme, 2008).The University of Califonia, (2016) described sustainability as the use of finite resources wisely and conservatively thinking the long-term consequences of environmental wellbeing, social justice and economic sparkle in order to generate prosperous, healthy, dynamic and resilient communities for existing and generation to come.Sustainability now takes inescapable place in travel and tourism industry.Coccossis, (1996) opined tourism can be defined relatively in four ways in the substance of sustainable development: A sectoral angle such as economic sustainability of tourism, an ecological viewpoint emphasizing the need for ecologically sustainable tourism, a viewpoint of the long-term viability of tourism, recognizing the competitiveness of destinations, and a viewpoint accepting tourism as part of a strategy for the sustainable development throughout the physical and human environments.

Tourism Destination
The selection of a tourism destination by the visitors is the key element of a tourist decision making process to go to visit; and that decision is persuaded by a number of internal (psychological) and external (non-psychological) variables (Oppewal et al., 2015).The transformation phase of industrial revolution, the invention of internet, mobile phone and computer has made tourism the largest and burgeoning industry in the world; makes information easily available to tourists and that makes tourism business intense competitive.Destination marketers/host regions now offer most of the information such as the culture of a destination, food, places to visit, buildings, monuments, traditions and customs, tourism business that provide services, recreation and entertainment, public order and social life to visitors via the internet.So, tourists virtually can access to information need to make their travel decision about a destination (Basarangil, 2021).Tourism industry is now facing much more intense competition than ever.According to leiper, (1979) destination is a physical contiguous unit of a region with distinguished features that attracts tourists for a transient period.The socio-cultural, religious, monuments, the historical importance of that place, natural environment, recreational and entertainment etc. may attract the non-residents (tourists) to make a visit that place/places for a short period.Gunn, (2002) and Metelka, (1990) defined tourism destination not only a territorial unit but also an economic unit.Medlik, (2003) further complemented the definition given by the Metelka and Gunn by saying, Tourism destination is a country, region or city on which tourist's actions and behavior, time and spending are centered.It's the hosting place of visitors' attraction, accommodation and the other tourist's amenities as well as services where the physical, economic and socio-cultural ramifications of tourism happen.From the explanation of a tourism harbor by the WTTC, Alaksanyan, (2020) defined tourism spot is a volumetric physical geographical unit with following components:

Data Analysis Technique
To analysis the collected data, descriptive statistics tools such as table, frequency, percentage, simple average and chart were used in this study.Tourists' opinion about products and services as well as their (tourists) perception about eco/sustainable tourism have been converted into qualitative ones using fivepoint rating likert scale; ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree; where strongly agree=5, agree=4, neutral=3, disagree=2, strongly disagree=1; Strongly agree outlines highly satisfaction and strongly disagree represents highly dissatisfaction.Open-ended questions were analyzed using qualitative techniques such as developing a code book, themes.Microsoft excel was used for both close and open-ended questionnaires and SPSS software was used only for close ended questionnaire.

Validity and Reliability
The alpha coefficient for seventeen items is .771that indicates a good level of internal uniformity or the reliability among the test items as a group.The following chart-2 provides information on the traveler's behavioral dimension at Atghar Kuriana and Vimruli.The graph demonstrates around 58% visitors travel for pleasure purpose followed by adventure tourists 24%.A large number of tourists got information about this destination from their friends 41%; The rest sources are online/ social media 28%, relatives 17% and family members 10%.Print and the electronic media have a little bit influence on tourists.
Various modes of communication are used to travel there, but Magic/Mahindra (24%), launch (22%), bus (21%) and others (trawler, private car, micro, etc.) are popular mode to travel there.Moreover, a significant number of visitors (99%) are the same day travelers, whereas, the large numbers of travelers (40%) stay less than 6 hours.On the other hand, nearly 33% visitors have no idea to adjacent tourist attractions.

Analysis of Five (5) -Point Likert Scale of Visitors' Response to Products and Services
Table 3 depicts descriptive statistics on visitors' response to products and services at Atghar Kuriana and Vimruli.

Is There a Difference Both Gender and Civil Status in Visitors' Statements to Destination Amenities and Visitors' Knowledge on Sustainable Tourism?
There is no difference in terms of visitors' response to destination facilities as well as visitors' knowledge on sustainable tourism, but collectively gender and civil status revealed a significant difference.Moreover, an ANOVA test was run for each dependent variable and found a significant difference between gender and civil Status on visitors' response to destination amenities.

Open Ended Questionnaire Analysis
The data provided shows the frequency, percentage, and cumulative frequency of responses generated from an open-ended questionnaire that asked visitors to provide their opinions on how to make this place a sustainable tourism destination.The responses were coded and categorized into different variables.The highest number of times, the responses generated were respectively creating awareness between visitors and local communities with a frequency of 59 (14% of the total responses) followed by developing communication (13%), sanitation facilities (12%), helping owner of guava orchid (11%), ensuring entertainment facilities (9%) and setting up enough standard quality cottage and restaurants (7%).Overall, the most important issues suggested by the visitors for making this tourism destination a sustainable destination are community engagement, developing communication systems, and basic amenities such as sanitation, restaurants, and cottages.

DISCUSSION:
The foremost motive of this study is to examine the limitations and challenges of Atghar Kuriana and Vimruli as a sustainable tourism destination and what can be done.The results unearth that most of the tourists did not show responsible behavior to destination.Their actions and activities are liable to sound and water pollution.They threw away polythene, plastic materials and other garbage in the canals, in addition, their behavior also responsible for destroying saplings and breaking the branches of the guava tree.Besides, some visitors misbehaved with the female tourists, especially eve teasing is a major problem.
Another most important aspect of the results is insufficient services to draw and make a repeat visit to this destination.These limitations are especially with sanitation facilities, standard and quality restaurants and cafes, lack of cottage and resorts as well as entertainment facilities both for children and young adults.Furthermore, tourists also show concern over safety and security system.The questions over mobile network and internet facilities are not also trivial.Publicity about this destination not significant.Maximum visitors get messages about this destination from their friends (41%) and social media (28%) which combine nearly 69%.

Limitations and Future Research Direction
The study was basically conducted to identify the challenges Atghar Kuriana and Vimruli to sustain as a tourist destination.The population of this study was tourists and local communities.It was not possible to get opinion from all stakeholders.Also, data were not collected from ages fifteen/below fifteen.Moreover, the sampling was convenience sampling and the questionnaires were in English, though, in some cases, questionnaires were translated into Bengali.The future study may be carried out on factors that motivate different age groups to make a visit there, in addition, tourism effects on environment, economic impact of tourism on local community.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS:
The study was conducted to explore the limitations and challenges of Atghar Kuriana and Vimruli as a sustainable tourism destination and what can be done; To identify the demographic profiles of the visitors and "how does local community recognize the tourism"?
The major challenges lie in sustaining the guava garden, the management of this destination, sanitation facilities, ensuring hygienic and quality restaurants, cottage, entertainment both for children and adult as well as safety security systems.The Sustainability of this destination largely depends on how well we nurture the unique features of this destination and deal with tourism.A number of recommendations has been made in this study that can substantially enhance the ability of this destination to handle the demands of tourists, local communities in addition to owners along with ensuring the sustainability of this destination.The recommendations are: 1) Creating awareness programs on conserving the alluring beauty of this garden, cultural phenolmena, and environmental effect of tourism related activities for both visitors and the local communities.2) Digging and renovating canals so that the flow of water can remain throughout the year and tourists can enjoy the divine beauty across the year.
3) Improving sanitation facilities, especially setting up a wash block at every point, ensuring fresh drinking water, giving a number of dustbins and developing sewerage disposal system.4) Promoting using a well-developed message on this destination on electronic, print and social media extensively and information about all dimensions of travel must be made available to tourist to visit this destination.5) Introducing soundless houseboats, many kinds of riding especially for children and teenagers, surfing and fishing facilities, setting up a zoo, picnic spots, parks and enough entertainment facilities.6) Building enough standard restaurants and cottages considering environmental impact 7) Law and order enforcing agency must be cautious so that nothing unpleasant can happen there especially eve teasing.8) Developing communication system, such as repairing link roads around the garden, especially roads connected Kuriana to Vimruli, Jhindhakathi to Vimruli including culverts as well as internet connection.9) Tourism activities there must be incorporated into the board development strategies of this region that will have a primary focus on local community, local Administrations and private firm's active participation.Besides, they need to work together to regulate activities related to tourism there.10) Helping guava farmers like training on multi usages of guava, preserving guava for a long period, free distribution of fertilizers and insecticides among farmers, providing interest free loan to farmers and developing communication system along with a marketing system to ensure a justified price for farmers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT:
I am grateful to the anonymous referees and editors for their valuable suggestions and comments in improving and publishing this article.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST:
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this manuscript.
The third part was developed to identify tourists' opinion about the products and services in Atghar Kuriana and Vimruli.The fourth part was about tourists' perception about eco/sustainable tourism.Finally, it draws the opinion of visitors using open-ended questionnaire about their recommendation and suggestion how to promote and protect this destination as a sustainable tourist destination.The questionnaire on local communities/stakeholder was about their demographic profile, attitude toward tourism as well as their suggestion how to promote and protect this destination as a sustainable tourist attraction.Secondary sources included: Journals, magazines, report and statement of the WTTC, UNEP, UNWTO, daily newspapers, thesis and websites.
METHODOLOGY:Quantitative survey research techniques were followed on this study.The populations of this study were visitors and local communities; a separate survey questionnaire for tourists and local communities was developed to serve study objectives.The survey was conducted using both open and close-ended questionnaires.The questionnaires were taken from nationality, civil condition, and the occupation), the second part includes visitors' plan and conduct (the choice of transportation, travel arrangement, the length of stay, the purpose of travel, information source about this place and concept about adjacent tourist at-traction).

Table 2 :
Demographic Genre of the Respondents.

Table 3 :
Visitors' Response to Products and Services.

Table 5 :
Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA).This indicates that the negative impacts of tourism are not limited to the environment in addition to affect social and cultural aspects of the local community.The mean value for the statement whether tourism poses threats to local culture is 3.07 that means participants are neutral.They do not have a clear opinion about the results of tourism on their culture.On the other hand, the remaining statements in the table represent that the local community sees tourism as an opportunity for economic development.They believe that tourism contributes to create local entrepreneurs, decreases poverty and to provide a source of income for local people.Additionally, respondents think that tourists are friendly to local community as well as respect local culture, norms, and values.Overall, the local community has a mixed attitude toward tourism.While, they see tourism as an economic opportunity, they are also concerned about its negative consequence on the environment, family, and community life.

Table 7 :
Visitors' Opinion to Make it a Sustainable Tourism Destination.