Myanmar is making arrangements to provide easy visa access to foreign tourists visiting the…
Myanmar is making arrangements to provide easy visa access to foreign tourists visiting the country and e-visas will be issued soon, the official newspaper The New Light of Myanmar reported on Sunday.
Quoting Minister of Hotels and Tourism Thein Zaw, the report said new tour destinations are being introduced and security measures being stepped up for the tourists as part of the promotional campaign of the country`s tourism industry.
Thein Zaw attended a meeting on tourism cooperation among four countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand held here Saturday.
To develop its tourism, Myanmar has been cooperating with tourism authorities of member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in regional activities, including cooperation programs for destinations in the ASEAN region and the Ganges-Mekong cooperation program.
Myanmar has signed bilateral cooperation agreements on tourism with four ASEAN members — Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Singapore along with China.
Among the ASEAN members, Thailand, which is also Myanmar`s immediate neighbor, stands as the country`s major tourist provider along with China, supplying a great number of cross-border tourists each year to the nation.
According to local statistics, tourist arrivals in Myanmar reached 277,647 during the first seven months of the fiscal year 2003-04 which began in April, increasing by 27.3 percent compared with the same period of the previous year.
It is reported that there are 540 travel companies running tourism business in Myanmar with over one billion US dollars of contracted foreign investment being already brought into the sector of hotels and tourism in 43 projects as of the end of 2002 since late 1988 when the country opened to such investment.
Myanmar has set a short-term target to draw 500,000 foreign tourists annually.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales. She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
