TEITA : A success story of travel entrepreneur
Campus Desk
TEITA ( Travel Entrepreneur Intelligent Tourist Aid ) has been formed by a young university student who dreamed for a revolution in travel industry. In just eight years, the organization has conducted more than seven hundred tours of different universities and corporate offices in home and abroad. The Beauty of Bengal has also been shown to foreign tourists by the ITA.
The founder of the organization Md. Jahedul Islam, a former student of Economics Department of Dhaka University told the story of being a successful travel entrepreneur.
September 26, 2012, I was a first-year student. On that day, a daily supplement on tourism was published. There was no lack of interest in tourism since my childhood. I was disappointed after reading the supplement. Because since my childhood i have seen, lots of tourist from our country and abroad coming to Cox's Bazar for sightseeing. I thought we may already in a good position in Tourism Sector. But I realized that the tourism sector of our country far behind than our neighbor country India, Bhutan and Nepal. We have the longest sea beach in the world, the largest mangrove forest, the mysterious natural beauty and so on, but why we are so far behind, why we can’t make it a successful industry?
Journey toward dreams
From these thoughts, I decided to work on tourism. In 12 December-2012, dream becomes true in the form of 'Intelligent Tourist Aid' in short 'ITA'. After starting my journey i shared my thoughts with my friends. Among them, Anisur Rahman, A.S.M Ali Imam, Md. Humayun Kabir, they were gladly agreed to join me in this mission.
Colorful dreams in our mind
In the beginning, I did a lot of research on different tourist spots, transportation, accommodation, food and other related things to tourism sector. I got a detailed idea about how to easily manage the tour in these spots by visiting it. Within a few days, Jalil Mahmud, Mahbubul Islam, Inzamul Haque, Md. Humayun Kabir, Zakir Hossain, Munshi Saddam Reza, Md. Akil Hossan, Wakilur Rahim and some other enthusiastic friends joined with us. In a short time, we successfully collected information about all the spots in our country. We made the necessary preparations to conduct a tour. We started to offline and marketing to spread our name to the target customers. We made hand leaflets, started postering wall and hanging banners on Dhaka University campus, sometimes we did this together whole night. We started our man to man marketing trough discussing about our organization with our friends, classmates, senior brothers, and teachers; and social media marketing through facebook. We started from scratch. There wasn’t much money in hand, not more experience. But there was no lack of confidence and patience.
Now we all prominent
Now it is 2020, Eight years of establishment of Intelligent Tourist Aid - ITA. In the meantime, ITA successfully conducted study tours of more than seven-hundred departments of different Public, National and Private Universities including University of Dhaka, Jahangirnagar University, Jagannath University, BUET, KUET, CUET, SUST, HSTU, NSTU, College of Home Economics, Dhaka College, Eden College, City College, ULAB, UAP, UIU, Besides, we also conducted corporate tours of various commercial organizations including Datapath Limited, Mycel, Dorin, DBBL, IBBL, National Bank, Bit Mascot, and so on. That is why ITA is now a well-known name in the tourism industry.
The first tour challenge
Normally, the responsibility of conducting the first tour falls on my shoulder, it was in December 2013. It was a study tour of 36th batch of the law department of Dhaka University. The spots were Bandarban, Cox's Bazar, and St. Martin. I was the guide of 60 teachers and students during the five-day tour. In the beginning tour was difficult to manage because of 60 guest, we can not reserve two bus because of the shortage of guests, besides money. Finally we reserved one bus, one hiace and one noah car to accommodate 60 guests. From this tour i learned how to successfully complete a tour by facing obstacles. For some place it was my first visit but managed like i was there before, It was a great challenge and adventure. I still wonder when I think of the first tour. How I showed so much courage in this very young time!!!
To make the tour success i couldn't make two eyelids together for a few nights in a row. I booked the hotel in advance, but when I went to collect ship tickets for St. Martin, I saw that there were no non-AC tickets! What else to do, the tour cannot be missed. So I managed the tour by collecting AC tickets with great difficulty with discount so that i can balance my budget constraint. Tour mate was very friendly specially teacher ma'am was fantastic, she encourage me for this my initiative, in the end of the tour they all was so happy with our service and hospitality. I still remember those days.
Expand operation to the outbound
After collecting experience and knowledge about home we planed to expand our operation to the outbound. It was Anisur Rahman who collected all the information about India and Bhutan tour and show courage to operate first international tour to India and Bhutan with the help of Mohaiminul Haque Joy and his excellent guiding. After that our mission is still going on by exploring new countries like Nepal, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and so on.
Inviting foreigners to our Country
We have shown the form of Bengal to foreigners. We like to share our culture, food and tradition with foreigners and encourage foreign tourists to come to Bangladesh. So every year we took some foreign tourists to many beautiful tourist spots in our country. They always are fascinated to see the beauty of Bangladesh.
Our First Office
Needless to say, the activities of our organization started from the room of Surja Sen Hall of Dhaka University. It was our dream to have our own office where we can seat and arrange a meeting. It became true in session 2015-16, we finally rent an office at Concord Emporium, In Katabon. We had a small office in ground floor, the funny thing is mobile network was very weak in our office strangely on my phone had minimum network to connect a call most of us go outside of the office to make a phone call. After one year we shifted our office to Khan Plaza, Science Lab, Now we are operating our office from Sahera Tropical Centre.
New Concerns
Jointly we named our companies as “Intelligent Group”. Intelligent Tourist Aid - ITA is the mother concern of “Intelligent Group”. There have some other concerns, Hotelswave.com, specially working for hotel booking, Sea view resort and sports, one of the beautiful resort at St. Martin, Hotel Oasis International, a most beautiful three-star hotel in Cox’sbazar, La Classico Sajek, presently under construction, UNOLO Technology limited, expertise on IT sector in Bangladesh, i Mart, glossary shop all of you want for daily life,
A partnership on Bay Cruise International, luxurious ships on the road of Teknaf to St. Martin and St. Sukanto Babu, a cruise ship in Cox’sbazar. Some new projects are coming in near future.
New day ahead
Day by day we are establishing tourist club in universities and colleges and campaigning for the awareness about tourism all over Bangladesh. Our goal is to improve the quality of hospitality and sustainable development of tourism industry in our country. We want to increase the number of foreign tourists as well as domestic tourist to contribute a grate portion of GDP and to create employment for thousands of people.
