Myanmar looking to restart domestic tourism in third quarter

Myanmar is expecting to restart domestic tourism in the third quarter of this year, an official from the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism told Xinhua on Saturday.

Under the COVID-19 Tourism Relief Plan recently launched by the ministry, domestic tourism will resume soon to help the tourism sector recover.

The tourism ministry and Religious Affairs and Culture Ministry are in talks to reopen the pagodas and cultural sites so as to restart domestic tourism very soon.

By the fourth quarter of this year, Myanmar will restart travel with neighbouring countries such as Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand, the official said.

The ministry is expecting tourism to kick-off with countries like China and Japan in early 2021, looking at 50-60% recovery of the industry while international tourism is expected to come back in early 2022.

Under the plan, the ministry has taken measures such as waiving off the one-year license fees, deferring lease fees charged to affected state-owned hotels for six months, organizing online training and running a digital marketing campaign.

As Myanmar is seeing fewer numbers of local COVID-19 transmissions, a total of 1,074 hotels, or 50% of total numbers of hotels across the country, have reopened after getting health and safety inspection passes as on Friday, the official said.