Myanmar Scrambling To Ease Hotel Shortage In Yangon

Myanmar scrambling to ease hotel shortage in Yangon

Yangon - Some 1,670 new hotel rooms will become available in Yangon next year, but officials say it will not be enough to meet an expected the surge in demand, reports said Sunday.

Myanmar’s main city and former capital will receive an estimated 600,000 tourists this year, and up to 900,000 in 2013, said Aung Zaw Win, chief of the government’s Directorate of Hotels and Tourism.

"If that happens, we definitely won’t have enough hotel rooms for travelers at the moment," he told the Myanmar Times. "That is why we are seriously looking at how to encourage hotel investment."

Yangon currently has 8,319 hotel and guesthouse rooms, sufficient to handle a maximum of 750,000 tourists a year.

Hotel prices have more than doubled this year as tourists pour into the country that shed its former pariah status with reforms by President Thein Sein, who came to power in March 2011

-- The Nation 2012-09-09