Tourism dwindling as calls mount for Myanmar boycott

BANGKOK, Thailand — The military's brutal crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar has derailed what was looking like a record year for tourism, with travel companies and governments warning visitors away from the Southeast Asian country.

As the ruling junta continues to root out dissidents after its bloody suppression of demonstrators, there are also renewed calls for a tourism boycott of the country.

In 2006, 263,500 tourists visited Myanmar, also know as Burma. And this year, with nearly 190,000 through August, was on track to be another record.

"It would have been a good year," said John Koldowski, spokesman for the Pacific Asia Travel Association, which represents some 1,000 travel agents, airlines and other enterprises associated with Asia's travel industry.

"It's gone real quiet," he said, noting that figures for September and even more so October would not add many to the number who had visited Myanmar through August.

Many travel companies, including high-end ones such as Orient-Express Hotels, Trains and Cruises, have recommended their customers think long and hard about whether to visit this year.

The company's 49-room Governor's Residence hotel remains open in Yangon and its Road to Mandalay cruise ship continues to sail the Irrawaddy River, but clients scheduled through Dec. 31 have been offered refunds, postponements or alternate destinations, said spokeswoman Pippa Isbell in London.

"It's entirely up to customers if they want to go," she said.

A number of governments, ranging from the United States to New Zealand and Britain, have advised their citizens against visiting Myanmar because of possible violence. Some big names in the travel industry have called for a boycott as the debate on the ethics of visiting Myanmar intensifies.

Those who support such travel say tourism helps ordinary, often poor people in the country, and the contacts between locals and foreigners in the isolated country are important. Those against it claim tourism income props up a brutal and corrupt regime.

"Now is the time to support a touristic boycott of Myanmar," Arthur Frommer, founder of the Frommer's travel guides, wrote in his blog Sept. 24 at the height of the protests. "Several major U.S. tour operators continue to operate trips to Myanmar, despite pleas not to do so by the country's democratically-elected leader, the Nobel-prize-winning Aung San Suu Kyi. On occasion after occasion, Mrs. Kyi has emphatically stated that such visits simply support the brutal, thuggish military junta that now rules Myanmar."

Vermont-based Country Walkers will continue to offer its "Trekking Myanmar" trip, which made the November issue of National Geographic Adventure magazine's "25 Best New Trips in the World," a list the magazine compiled in mid-September before the violent crackdown.

Only four of the 14 who booked places on the Dec. 28 tour canceled, said Jamen Yeaton-Masi, director of Country Walkers operations. She said there were long discussions about the ethics of going, but for those who decided to go ahead, "They're not going because they support the dictatorship. They are going because, more than ever, they'd like to go and support the people. ... The people, the locals, really want tourists back. It's a huge source of revenue."

Tony Wheeler, co-founder of Lonely Planet, which publishes a guidebook to Myanmar, said that some good can come from visiting.

"I wouldn't suggest anybody should go to Burma without their eyes wide open, fully aware of the pluses and minuses of their visit. If they're aware of that and act accordingly, and maximizing the pluses and minimizing the minuses is something we try very hard to underline in our book, then I think there are positive reasons to visit the country," he said via e-mail from Australia.

"Just one of the comments I've received in recent days: 'I return from my holiday with a simple message from the Burmese I met. Come. Bear witness. Go home and tell others. Bring pressure to bear,"' Wheeler said.

Luzi Matzig, CEO of Asian Trails Ltd. in Bangkok, said by next year the political situation could be back to normal, but much of this year is lost to the travel industry.

"In October we lost everything. November we have about 40 percent, and December 50 percent of reservations," he said.

"We've got a situation where we don't know which way the action could go, so unless it's absolutely mandatory that you be there, have a real hard think about it," said Koldowski, of the Pacific Asia Travel Association.

"Companies are now gearing up to early '08. If it stays calm people might return, but that's a big if, and there is also the moral question about visiting. That is a big topic on the Internet," Koldowski said.