It may be a shocker to those in the tourism industry, but it seems hotels in Yangon and other major areas just aren’t that packed despite reports of millions of tourists visiting Myanmar every year.
Government tourism numbers, which have come under more scrutiny of late, say some 4.5 million tourists visited the country in 2015.
But a report on fairly empty hotels on Tuesday in the Global New Light of Myanmar seems to undermine this assertion. And by undermine we mean disprove.
According to the report, 46 percent of hotels in Yangon are vacant. In Mandalay, it’s a little more, and in other cities such as Inle Lake’s Nyaung Shwe, it’s a lot more, around 75 percent.
Where are these millions of tourists staying?
In addition, the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism is stopping the construction of new hotels because of the lack of demand, the report said.
We could not independently verify the statistics, but given how empty some hotels are they can’t be that far off.
Let’s not even get started on the rate in Naypyitaw, which must be alarming.
