Articles tagged “myanmar”

ASTA’s new Myanmar chapter and planned partnership with Myanmar tourism will give travel advisors new opportunities to learn about an emerging destination. However, it also raises ethical concerns about supporting a country that engages in ethnic cleansing.

It was mostly business as usual for Myanmar tourism at the Pacific Asia Travel Association's 2018 travel mart. With visitation to Myanmar declining from Europe, the Americas, and Africa, Myanmar is going after Chinese, Japanese, and Korean tourists. But so is almost everyone else.

Words as a means to define problems and trigger solutions are important. The label overtourism crystalizes a problem and serves as a call to action. We'd agree that a lack of capacity management is a big part of the problem, but the latter characterization hardly spurs the urgency the issue requires.

Travel is the world's largest industry and should be taking a leadership position about Myanmar to publicly condemn ethnic cleansing, and show the country's military government that tourism dollars aren't unconditional if it supports crimes against humanity.

As the world's fastest-growing region for tourism it's a good sign that some Asian countries can expect to see healthy travel and tourism investment during the next 10 years. But a number of factors could alter these projections, particularly the Chinese market, as more global tourism trends are tested in this region.

Pinterest's list of travel destinations represents where travelers wish to go while lists of check-ins and photos from other social networks show where they've gone. The difference in the types of places on each lists highlights the differences in travelers' fantasies and realities.

Even where credit card machines are present, there is no guarantee that they'll work. The seemingly antiquated method of travel payments is one of the more evident examples of how unprepared Myanmar is groping to deal with an influx of visitors.

It is a start, and a decent one at that.