U Myint Htwe, director, Ministry of Hotels and Tourism told the local news media that the country of Myanmar has been capable of attracting over 600,000 international travellers at the end of the month of February 2017 and this is much greater than the same period in the year 2016.
But then, the overall tourist arrivals last year were only 2.9 million marking a decline of 38% as compared to the 4.68 million tourists in 2015, as determined in a new system of collecting data by the ministry.
This, does not include day trippers with border passes.
The Union Minister for Hotels and Tourism, U Ohn Maung said that the previous system had counted tourists arriving through international border checkpoints. But then, this year’s figures were categorized into business travellers, day trippers and tourists. He had made this comment at the ASEAN Tourism Forum that was recently held in Singapore.
The overall tourism outlook appear promising even though there has been a 38% decline because of a different way of counting foreign visitors, as declared by Ma Hnin Hlwar Kyaw Win, sales manager from Myanmar Tourism Services Company.
She said that few tourists to Myanmar are also coming from Japan and Russia but having said that, visitors from other nations have also increased.
