A total of 654,602 foreign tourists visited Myanmar in the fiscal year 2006-07 which ended in March, bringing about an increase of 11.4 percent of the country's foreign exchange earning compared with the previous year, a local news journal reported Tuesday.

The earning through tourism during the year hit 198.48 million U.S. dollars, up from 178.17 million dollars in 2005-06, said the Weekly Eleven News.

Of the 654,602 tourists visiting Myanmar in 2006-07, 276,613 entered through Yangon checkpoint, 5,763 through Mandalay and Bagan checkpoints and 372,226 through border checkpoints, the report said.

Travelers stayed in Myanmar for an average of seven days, spending about 114 dollars per day per head, according to statistics.

Of the types of tours, package tour accounted for 25 percent, while free independent traveler 47 percent and the rest with other visas 28 percent.

The tourists visiting Myanmar mostly came from Thailand, China, South Korea and Japan in Asia, Germany, France and Italy in West Europe and some countries in North America.

Myanmar has over 600 hotels with 23,000 rooms as well as 700 travel and tour companies.

Since the Myanmar Hotels and Tourism Ministry started conducting tourist guides training courses in 1992, it has brought up more than 6,000 tourist guides up to 2006, the ministry sources disclosed.

More figures revealed that contracted foreign investment in the sector of hotels and tourism has so far amounted to 1.06 billion dollars since Myanmar started to open to such investment in late 1988. Of the investment, that in hotel projects amounted to over 580 million dollars.

Source: Xinhua