Tourist Arrivals in Myanmar’s Second Largest City Up 26 Percent in 2017
AUTHOR: XINHUA | 29 JAN 2018
| VOL 6 ISSUE 5
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Tourist arrivals in Myanmar's second largest city up 26 percent in 2017.jpg
Morley J Weston/MBT
Tourists are visiting to Mandalay Palace Myanmar
Tourist arrivals in Myanmar's second largest city of Mandalay in the north increased by about 100,000 or 26 percent correspondingly, hitting 483,784 in 2017, according to a latest statistics of the Directorate of Hotels and Tourism of Mandalay region.
In 2016, 385,031 world tourists visited the last royal capital, a year-on-year rise from 2012's 160,795.
The majority of the visitors came from China, followed by France, Germany, Thailand and Britain.
Mandalay is famous for its cultural heritage among international travelers.
The significant tourist attractions of the region include Bagan Cultural Zone, Golden Palace Monastery, Kuthodaw Pagoda, Maha Myatmuni Pagoda, Mandalay Hill, Pahtodawgyi Pagoda, Mandalay Palace and Mandalay Fort.
Aimed at promoting the region's smokeless industry, the tourism authorities are introducing special programs such as walking Thingyan (water festival), travel show, Myanmar traditional boxing event and lighting festival.
Meanwhile, Myanmar is striving for enlisting Bagan as one of the world's cultural heritages lying in Mandalay region, the central part of the country with thousands of religious edifices and pagodas.
Cooperation is being made with intellectuals and technicians for the maintenance of Bagan which has dignity and value for being a world heritage if enlisted.
With over 3,000 Buddhist temples, monasteries, stupas and monuments compacted into one area, Bagan is a home for Buddhist architectures signifying the unique morals adorning interior walls of the religious edifices.
Myanmar received 2.9 million tourist arrivals in 2016 and in the first eight months of 2017, it had brought in 2.27 million tourists, up 22 percent against the same period of the previous year.
Myanmar targeted to attract 3.5 million tourist arrivals in the whole of 2017.
