Bangladesh's first community-based agro-tourism project, Sukher Khamar Agro Limited, is taking shape in Bagoil village of Kahalu upazila, Bogura. Its master design was unveiled on the stage of the 13th Asian Tourism Fair 2026 at the International Convention City Bashundhara in Dhaka on the afternoon of Friday, 18 September, where more than 150 partners were handed registered sale deeds for their land.

The design shows a 100-room agro resort with a restaurant, convention hall, swimming pool and boating. On the same grounds will sit an integrated farm: a 400-head cattle unit, a fish farm run on the bottom-clean method, goat and dumba sheep units, a 1 MW solar power installation, a biogas plant, and a mosque with a hafizia orphanage madrasa.

Earth filling and road building on the site are complete and full construction begins in October, the organisers said. The project runs on a Shariah-based musharaka model; more than a thousand people from 21 countries and 42 districts have become partners, each with land registered in their own name. The first deeds were handed over at a 'Founder Night' on 25 July.

Partners own the land and the project through shares, receive a portion of the actual profit from the project's 15 income streams, get a free family stay at the resort every year and can buy the farm's produce at a discount, the company says. The site is about 12 km from Bogura town.

Chairman Md Tasdikh Habib told the gathering that the biggest problem in Bangladesh's agriculture is the lack of a fair price, and that agro-tourism is one answer because the farmer sells an experience as well as a crop. Managing director Zobayer Islam said more than 2,000 guests have already visited the farm, creating what he described as a Tk 1 crore new economy in a single village.

By the company's count, Sukher Khamar Agro Village has created direct jobs for 41 people in Bagoil and made 10 women entrepreneurs self-reliant. It aims to build eight such villages, one in each division, by 2035.

Citing the research firm IMARC Group, the report puts the global agro-tourism market at more than US$81 billion in 2025, growing at about 11 per cent a year towards US$209 billion by 2034. The World Travel and Tourism Council estimated tourism's contribution to Bangladesh's GDP at around Tk 1,02,000 crore in 2023, and the government has set a target of lifting it to 6-7 per cent of GDP.

Singer and music director Milon Mahmud was chief guest at the ceremony, which was attended by partners from home and abroad and by tourism entrepreneurs. The report is from Protidiner Bangladesh.

Source: Protidiner Bangladesh