50 Guests per Operator

The full numbers

The Department of Tourism had 3,818 licensed tour operators as of the most recent published count (2019). Bhutan received 210,000 tourist arrivals in 2025. Average tourists per operator: 55. However, the distribution is severely skewed: industry estimates suggest the top 10-15 operators capture roughly 85% of premium international bookings. That leaves the remaining 3,800 operators sharing about 31,500 tourists — an average of just 8 customers per operator per year, or roughly one customer every six weeks.

Imagine this

In a small office above a shop in Thimphu, a man in his 50s sits at a desk. He has a printed sign on the door: “[Name] Travels Pvt Ltd.” He has held a tour operator licence since 2008. In 2024, he handled three tourist bookings. In 2025, four. His business is real on paper, but the office is mostly empty. He pays the annual licence fee, attends an occasional DoT briefing, and the rest of the year he runs a small retail business unrelated to tourism. There are roughly 3,800 versions of him scattered across Bhutan. Most have day jobs as teachers, government servants, retired civil servants, drivers, or shopkeepers. The tour operator licence is a side asset — useful for occasional referrals to family abroad, useful as a credential, useful for the possibility that one big tour might come. But for almost all of them, “tour operator” is not their business; it’s their qualification.

Where this came from

DoT issued tour operator licences liberally in the late 2000s and early 2010s as a way to broaden participation in the tourism economy. The barriers to entry were low — small capital requirement, simple application. The intent was empowerment. The result was credentialism: thousands of licences without commensurate business activity. Post-COVID, many of these dormant operators stayed dormant; only a handful actually reactivated.

Why this matters now

The 13th FYP targets 300,000 tourists by 2029. Even if achieved, the math doesn’t support 3,800 operators — at peer-country ratios (1 operator per 250-400 tourists), 300K tourists supports 750-1,200 active operators, not 3,800. The current licensing structure means most of the 3,800 will never have meaningful business. Meanwhile, regulating, communicating with, and quality-assuring 3,800 operators consumes scarce DoT capacity that could be focused on the 200-500 operators who actually move volume.

What it should be

A market with 500-1,000 active, well-resourced operators would serve Bhutan’s tourism volume better than 3,800 mostly-dormant licences. Licensing should be tied to demonstrated activity (e.g., minimum bookings per year), and the dormant base should be allowed to lapse or be consolidated.

How others do it

• Costa Rica — 1.7M tourists, approximately 500 active operators. Ratio: 1:3,400 tourists per operator. Licensing is renewable based on activity.
• Maldives — 1.7M tourists, approximately 250 operators (resort/dive operators included). Highly concentrated; few licences, high activity.
• Iceland — 2.2M tourists, ~800 operators. Ratio 1:2,750. Operators are well-resourced businesses, not dormant licences.
• Nepal — closer comparator: 1M tourists, ~3,200 operators. Ratio 1:312. Nepal has a similar dilution issue, though less extreme than Bhutan.
• Bhutan: 1:55 = 50-100x more operators per tourist than typical peer countries.

The question we should be sitting with

If only 15 operators serve the real market, what are the other 3,800 actually for? What would change if we required minimum annual bookings to keep a licence — and recycled the rest?