Tourist Visits to Burma Top 1 Million

By | Thursday, January 17, 2013 |

Tourism visits to Burma surged to a record one million visitors last year, in the wake of the political reforms and a relaxation of visitor restrictions, AFP reports. It cited government figures, which showed an annual increase of almost 30 percent. “This is a very outstanding year for the industry,” said Phyoe Wai Yar Zar of the Myanmar Tourism Board, who added that an increase of 15 percent was expected this year. The figures also show Burma has just 800 hotels with about 28,000 rooms. Officials claim Burma can handle the surge in visitors, but hotel rates and the price of domestic flights have increased sharply in 2012.

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One Response to Tourist Visits to Burma Top 1 Million

vivat chutikamoltham Sunday, January 20, 2013 - 5:01 pm

It is quite a disappointment that hotels in Myanmar have increased their rates by 200-300% without any improvement on their services and facilities. For example, one hotel in downtown Yangon has increased its rate from USD 20 (in 2011) to now USD 70 but its buffet breakfast has very few things to eat, apart from eggs, bread, coffee/tea and banana. It also serves a “rice soup” (called “porridge” elsewhere) with only salted eggs. Its housekeeping is also horrible, came to clean my room only once during my 4-day stay, leaving my trash basket overflowed. I lost my patience on the 4th day and had to ask the manager to call the housekeeper to clean my room. Then, I had to bring my laptop down to work at the lobby for 2 hours until the cleaning was done. Most of the hotel staff, apart from the front office staff, hardly speak and understand any English. So, I usually ended up getting things not what I asked for. If I have to rate this hotel against international standard, I would give it a minus-one star which is worse than a hotel without any star.

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