Myanmar’s Ministry of Hotels and Tourism has called on hotels to lower their rates in an effort to attract more tourists, the military-run Myawady Daily reported last week.
According to the report, the ministry has identified high hotel rates and high prices for domestic air tickets as the main reasons for Myanmar’s lower-than-expected number of tourist arrivals in recent years.
Hotel rates in Laos and Cambodia are US$75 cheaper than their Myanmar equivalents, and the average hotel room in Myanmar is US$130 per night, according to the ministry.
Successive Myanmar governments have been trying to bring down hotel rates for years. In 2012, shortly after Myanmar’s previous government announced plans to reform the country’s economy, high tourism projections drove some hotel rates beyond US$250 per night. Some hotels were found to have been inflating their occupancy rates in order to justify the high prices.
The Ministry of Hotels and Tourism responded by trying to cap nightly rates at foreign-owned hotels at US$150 per night, saying skyrocketing rates had the potential “to destroy the image of Myanmar as a tourist destination.”
When the cap proved difficult to enforce, then-minister Tint Hsan threatened to block visa renewals for the general managers of hotels that failed to follow it and to block the hotels’ lease renewals.
Since then, the government has continued to struggle to bring Myanmar hotel rates in line with the regional market.
In October 2016, the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business called for “a full range of licensed accommodation at competitive prices” as a solution to Myanmar’s slow tourism growth.
“Tourists are complaining about high prices and poor-quality service, and as a result are not returning to Myanmar for a second visit, or even choosing it for a first,” wrote the center’s director, Vicky Bowman, in Frontier.
“As existing, overpriced hotels deteriorate, more and more potential visitors will shun Myanmar and instead choose to stay at much more comfortable and cheaper accommodation in competing destinations elsewhere in Southeast Asia. The solution to oversupply should be better pricing and marketing.”
However, high costs are not the only explanation for the slow growth of Myanmar tourism. Last month, the Union of Myanmar Travel Association reported that tourist arrivals were 11 percent lower this year than last year. The association attributed the slump to tourists’ feelings about the Rohingya refugee crisis.
