Bangladesh opened its largest travel fair in Dhaka with medical tourism among the offerings on sale, though most of the patients it can sell trips to will be travelling out of the country rather than into it. The Business Standard reported that the 21st Air Astra Dhaka Travel Mart 2026 began on 9 April in the ballroom of the Pan Pacific Sonargaon Dhaka, a three-day event organised by The Bangladesh Monitor with the airline Air Astra as title sponsor. More than 50 organisations from Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey, Vietnam, China and host Bangladesh took booths, the paper said.
Who is exhibiting and what is on sale
Exhibitors filled 10 pavilions and more than 80 booths, The Business Standard reported, among them airlines, travel agencies, hotels, tour operators, financial institutions and medical service providers. Visitors could book discounts on domestic and international air tickets, tour packages, hotel stays and medical tourism services, the paper said, with entry priced at 50 taka and the doors open from 10am to 8pm across 9 to 11 April. Raffle draws offered return air tickets, hotel stays and dining vouchers. A single day ticket cost 50 taka. The fair ran for three days in all. The Pan Pacific Sonargaon has hosted the mart before, this time for a 21st year.
The opening drew senior officials. Civil Aviation and Tourism Minister Afroza Khanam Rita opened the fair as chief guest, The Business Standard reported, with State Minister M Rashiduzzaman Millat as special guest and the member of parliament M Nasser Rahman as guest of honour. Rita cut the ribbon in the Sonargaon ballroom on Thursday, with Millat and Rahman beside her. Air Astra held the title sponsorship, and the paper listed US-Bangla Airlines, Mutual Trust Bank and Sabre among the supporting partners.
The direction of the trade
The medical tourism on sale at a Dhaka fair mostly points outward. Bangladesh is one of the largest source markets in Asian medical tourism, and its patients fill hospital wards in India, Thailand and Malaysia rather than the reverse. The medical service providers taking booths are, for the most part, facilitators and foreign hospitals selling trips abroad, not a domestic industry drawing patients in. That is the honest reading of “medical tourism services” on the price list: discounted routes to care in another country.
The destinations know it. Malaysia has run a dedicated campaign to pull Bangladeshi patients its way, with its tourism push in Bangladesh timed to Visit Malaysia 2026, and Thailand has watched its Bangladeshi patient numbers climb. Indonesian hospitals have joined the same contest, with Siloam Hospitals signing an agreement to treat Bangladeshi patients. A travel fair in Dhaka is one of the places that trade gets brokered.
Source-market concentration cuts both ways
There is a standing way to read an event like this. A country can host a medical tourism pavilion and still be a net exporter of patients, and the pavilion is evidence of the outbound demand, not of an inbound industry. For the destinations that draw Bangladeshi patients, that demand is a concentration risk in reverse. Much of their foreign-patient revenue rests on a single neighbouring source market whose own government would rather keep those patients and their spending at home. A fair that makes it easier to book a hospital in Chennai or Bangkok also measures how much treatment Bangladesh is still sending abroad.
For Bangladesh the same fair marks the gap between hosting the trade and holding it. Building the domestic capacity that would keep those patients is a longer project than staging a three-day mart. Until that capacity exists, the medical tourism booths at the Dhaka Travel Mart will keep selling flights out.
What to watch
The measurable signals are on the calendar. The next editions of the fair will show whether the number of medical service providers grows, and whether more of them are Bangladeshi hospitals selling inbound care rather than facilitators selling outbound trips. The arrivals figures published by India, Thailand and Malaysia will show whether Bangladesh’s outbound flow keeps rising. Until a Dhaka fair is mostly selling treatment inside Bangladesh, the medical tourism on its price list is a measure of patients leaving, not arriving.
