|
|
Myanmar building resorts in southern archipelago |
 |
+ |
- |
19:58, July 03, 2007 |
Myanmar is building resorts on four islands of Myeik Archipelago in the country's south in an effort to attract travelers from neighboring countries especially from Thailand, tour operators said on Tuesday.
The resorts are being built by some private tour companies, aiming to induce tourists mainly from the Thai border town of Phuket from where traveling by yachts to the archipelago has been granted by the Myanmar tourism authorities since 1999.
The Myeik archipelago holds potential for eco-tourism development, said the local Voice journal, predicting that the archipelago would in the future become the most attractive tourist site in Southeast Asia in terms of eco-tourism.
As the Myeik Archipelago in the Tanintharyi division, made up of 800 pristine islands and is full of wonder, domestic hotel and tour operators are being urged to offer international-level services to prospective visiting world tourists.
In fact, the first annual Salone festival held in 2004 at the Myeik archipelago, where Salone ethnic minorities inhabit, has paved way for promoting tourism in the area.
The forested and coral-fringed Myeik arch, which covers over 36, 240 square kilometers, teems with wildlife and is almost totally devoid of tourism facilities.
In tourism development in the area, Myanmar's border port of Kawthoung plays a key role in absorbing tourists from Thailand.
Meanwhile, Myanmar has added more beach hotels to strengthen the accommodation capacity in addition to those at the country's famous Ngapali Beach as part of its plan to enhance the development of tourism industry.
Moreover, Myanmar has also planned to build an airport for the current tourism-business-booming beach resort of Ngwesaung in the country's southwestern division of Ayeyawaddy to facilitate local and foreign travelers.
Following Ngapali and Ngwesaung, the Chaungtha, which is also in the Ayeyawaddy division, stands as the third beach resort in Myanmar which draws large number of visitors.
Local statistics show that in the fiscal year of 2006-07 which ended in March, a total of 654,602 foreign tourists visited Myanmar which has over 600 hotels with 23,000 rooms as well as 700 travel and tour companies.
And contracted foreign investment in the sector of hotels and tourism has so far amounted to 1.06 billion U.S. dollars since Myanmar started to open to such investment in late 1988, accounting for 7.1 percent of the country's total foreign investment. Of the investment, that in hotel projects amounted to over 580 million dollars.
Source: Xinhua
|
|
|
Comment
Tell A Friend
Print Format
Save Article