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Tourists coming to Myanmar during the first months of this
year have increased by 22 percent over the same period of last year,
according to the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism.
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“We got more than 600,000 international visitors at the end of
February, the number of which was greater than the same period in 2016,”
U Myint Htwe, director from the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism told The Myanmar Times.
However,
the overall tourist arrivals last year were only 2.9 million, a decline
of 38pc in comparison to the 4.68 million visitors in 2015, according
to a new system of collecting data by the ministry, which did not
include day trippers with border passes.
“The previous system
counted visitors coming through international border checkpoints. But
this year’s figures were systematically categorized into tourists,
business travelers, day trippers,” according to U Ohn Maung, Union
Minister for Hotels and Tourism, who made this comment at the recently
held ASEAN Tourism Forum in Singapore.
“However, the overall
tourism outlooks are very good, despite the 38pc decline due to a
different way of counting foreign visitors,” Ma Hnin Hlwar Kyaw Win,
sales manager from Myanmar Tourism Services Company told The Myanmar Times. She said that few visitors to Myanmar are coming from Russia and Japan but tourists from other countries have increased.
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Source - mmtimes
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