Lots of Bangladeshi and international ride sharing and ride hailing apps or companies operate vehicles to and from the airport such as Obhai, Pathao, Shohoz, Uber, etc. There is also a taxi kiosk, located near the exit gate of the international arrivals concourse hall, where one can order a taxi and pre-pay the taxi fare. The hotel nearest to the airport is the Radisson Blu Dhaka Water Garden Hotel, closely followed by Le Méridien Dhaka Hotel and the Dhaka Regency Hotel. A Best Western hotel opened in late 2014. The airport has been almost engulfed by the city, due to the expansion and development work of real estate companies and the government, prompting the authorities to construct a third terminal and build another international airport elsewhere in Dhaka district. History In 1941, during the Second World War, the British government built a landing strip at Kurmitola, several kilometres north of Tejgaon, as a spare landing strip for the Tejgaon Airport, which at the time was a military airport, to operate warplanes towards the war fields of Kohima (then in Assam) and Burmese war theatres. After the creation of Pakistan in 1947, Tejgaon Airport became the first civilian airport in what was then East Pakistan, present day Bangladesh. During the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war, the then abandoned airstrip was bombed by Indian Air Force, thinking it to be the Tejgaon Airport as the base. In 1966, a project was taken by the then Pakistan Government to construct a new airport, and the present site north of Kurmitola was selected. A tender was floated for the construction of the terminal building and the runway under the technical support of French experts. A rail station (present day Airport Railway Station) was also built near the site for the transportation of construction materials. However, the new airstrip was only halfway done when the Bangladesh Liberation War broke out in 1971. During war, the airstrip suffered severe damage. After independence, the Government of Bangladesh restarted works abandoned by the previous contractors and consultants during the war. The government decided to make the airport the country's main international airport and appointed Aéroports de Paris of France as its new consultants. The airport began operations in 1980 after the main runway and central portion of the present terminal building was formally opened by then President of Bangladesh, Ziaur Rahman, as Dacca International Airport ("Dacca" is the former spelling