Visitors from different corners have already booked hotel rooms as per their requirement in Cox's Bazar and coral island Saint Martin’s.
Tickets for the six tourist ships on the Teknaf-Saint Martin’s and Cox's Bazar-Saint Martin routes have already been sold out.
Thousands of people, craving for a pleasant trip on the holiday, are still on way to the country's two largest tourist spots (Cox's Bazar-St Martin).
Visitors' rush was mainly seen from Wednesday (December 15) afternoon, officials said.
The hotel owners said the three-day public holiday starts comprising the Victory Day today and the two-day weekend (Friday and Saturday) tomorrow and day after tomorrow.
For this reason, both government and private employees have started making trips to various tourist spots, including Cox's Bazar, since Wednesday afternoon.
Abul Kashem Sikder, general secretary of the Cox's Bazar district unit of the Federation of Bangladesh Tourism Services Association, said Cox's Bazar will overflow with tourists by today (Thursday) morning.
He said about 500 hotels, motels and guest houses in Cox's Bazar have the capacity to accommodate about 1.5 lakh tourists.
Ninety per cent of the hotel rooms have been booked for the three-day holiday, while the remaining 10 per cent have been left vacant for 'special guests'. Mukim Khan, general secretary of the Cox's Bazar Marine Drive Hotel-Resort Owners' Association, said bookings at Marine Drive hotels were almost completed for the holiday from Thursday to Saturday.
Besides, bookings of hotel rooms for 24th and 25th December and 30th, 31st December and 1st January have also been completed.
SM Kibria Khan, the founding president of the Cox's Bazar Tour Operators Association, said bookings for St. Martin's ships and hotels were also closed for the next four days on the occasion of the Victory Day.
At present there are six tourist ships on the Teknaf-Saint Martin route and one each on the Cox's Bazar-Saint Martin and Chittagong-Saint Martin routes.
Cox's Bazar receives the highest number of tourists during the two Eids, Durga Puja and the English New Year. However, due to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, Cox's Bazar tourist spot was closed for about five months from March to August last year.
However, after the limited-scale opening of the tourism industry in mid-August, the number of tourists visiting Cox's Bazar in the last English New Year surpassed the previous record. At that time, more than one million (10 lakh) tourists gathered in Cox's Bazar in a single day, said the tourism sector insiders.
They think that the influx of tourists could largely increase this year for the launch of the corona vaccination campaign. Cox's Bazar's tourist attractions were also closed from April 1 to August 16 this year in the wake of the second wave of Covid-19.