Feature: Floating hotels in Bangladesh offer ultra-cheap accommodation but fail to lure high-flyers

The floating hotels anchored at the bank of river Buriganga, a major commercial hub and the gateway to Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, offer guests a unique lodging experience and unrivaled panoramas and are extremely easy on the wallet.

Guests can stay in any of the five hotels on the Buriganga river, south window of Dhaka, for one night for just less than half a U.S. dollar.

The floating hotels' highest rate is about 80 taka (about 1 U.S. dollar) for a small private cabin while the lowest price of 30 taka applies for a bed in a common room.

Despite the unbelievably cheap prices, the hotels have been failing to woo customers recently as they have lost their former glory over the years and just remain empty floating vessels.

The Buriganga river itself can smell of foul waste, with the aged hotels looking not merely old and dirty from the outside, but also from the inside as well.

During the 1950s the floating hotels popped up for the first time in Buriganga for merchants who came to Dhaka by river for business.

There were at least fifty floating hotels in Buriganga before Bangladesh's independence.

After the independence in 1971 Bangladesh has remarkably developed its roadway infrastructure, easing pressure on the overburdened waterways.

This has reduced the number of affluent customers staying in the hotels, resulting in the degrading of their overall conditions.

Now there are four large and one small floating hotels which are still cost-effective for low-income people who visit Dhaka or stay in Dhaka to earn their bread and butter.

As wealthy customers have dropped drastically, the hotels have gradually become a base purely for low-income people.

Less affluent traders from remote Bangladeshi districts who have business in and around the busy Sadarghat also called Sadarghat Port, the Dhaka City River Front, located in the southern part of Dhaka, on the river Buriganga. And many such traders have been staying in these hotels for years.

Street vendor Md Mostafa is one such regular guest. For decades he has been living in a floating hotel as he travels between Dhaka and his home district of central Sharitpur, some 101 km away from the capital city.

"I sell various kinds of fruit juices (sherbets) on the streets of Dhaka and live in one of the floating hotels. I prefer to stay in these floating hotels because at night I can return whenever I want to my hotel room. But if I stay at a family house I have to return by 11 or 12 p.m. at night. There is no such restriction with the floating hotels," Mostafa said.

Another vendor, Mohammad Litton, has also been regularly living in the shabby floating hotels.

Litton is a seasonal food vendor. He has been living in the floating hotels for as long as he has been trading in Dhaka.

"I come from the Patuakhali district about 204 km south of Dhaka. I need to earn money to support my father, mother and brothers and sisters at home. I sell seasonal fruits at Sadarghat and live in the cabin of a floating hotel for 80 taka per night."

The common room in the floating hotels offer a communal space that can sleep between 10 and 15 people for 30 taka per night, he said and added, "I prefer to stay in a cabin because I can keep my possessions safe. For cabin customers they provide small lockers to keep their valuable things in."

"There is no problem at all. I am just scared of living on the river when there are powerful storms and heavy rain."

Shahjahan Mia, manager of one of the floating hotels named Sharitpur, which was built before 1971, said they are actually making a good profit from running a floating hotel business.

"The income is not bad at all for the floating hotels although poor people stay with us at cheaper rates. Our daily income stands at about 1,500-2,000 taka after paying all the expenses, including electricity and others bills."

He said there are ample opportunities for businesses to make money by launching posh floating hotels in Buriganga, one of 250 rivers and tributaries which crisscross Bangladesh, a beautiful, flat and low- lying river delta country. Endit