Myanmar Coming to a Crossroads

History doesn’t really help in places like Myanmar, where optimism is an essential ingredient if a positive future is to be carved out of a cynical past. This history is loaded with chimerical kingdoms and colonial programs that, for all their grandeur, left one of Asia’s most resource-rich countries one of the continent’s poorest today.

Post-war history in Myanmar has been even less kind as subsequent liberations from the British and then the Japanese left a military claque in command. In 2007, a heavily suppressed rebellion by Buddhist monks and the ongoing struggle of national heroine and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Aung San Suu Kyi have kept the tyranny on the front pages of newspapers around the world and justified what were crippling U.S. sanctions.

Things improved dramatically in 2011, when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hammered out a deal with the junta of generals who run the country to lift the sanctions, provided the country went on a path to political liberalization and free elections. The generals agreed to free Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and to allow free elections that will happen next November. The fate of the people, the institutions, natural endowments and tourism of Myanmar are hanging in the balance. The election will decide who directs tourism in the future: professionals or cronies.

Thus far, tourism has been an important catalyst in a spate of Burmese improvements. In 2013, Myanmar attracted about 2 million visitors. The country anticipates 3 million this year and 7.5 million by 2020. “Demand is rising so fast, it’s driving prices higher,” said U Naung Naung Han of the general secretary of the Union of Myanmar Travel Association. “Germany, France and Spain have been steady for a few years. The new growth is really coming from the U.S. and the U.K. and that began three years ago with the lifting of sanctions. Before that we had fewer than 10,000 American visitors. This year we’re expecting more than 60,000.”

The loud hammers of progress can be heard almost everywhere. China is planning a rail line connecting Kunming to Yangon. New hotels are announced on an almost weekly basis. Credit cards can be used now. You can get e-visas online.

Though internet connectivity is spotty at best, telecommunications are vastly improved. Eun Young Lee, the Sule Shangri-La’s director of sales, has been in Myanmar for 17 years. Two years ago, she said, a sim card for your telephone cost about $2,000. Two months ago it cost about $200 and today they cost about $3.

“The ability to use telephones and connect with people here and abroad is an unmeasurable force for change,” she said. “Who knows what just that by itself is going to mean.”

Severine Fallet, Abercrombie &Kent’s Myanmar country manager arrived from France just before 2007’s Saffron Revolution and in only seven years she’s seen an enormous improvement in freedom of speech.

“People speak openly now,” she said. “They feel free to criticize the government. When Hillary Clinton came here, big changes began. I believe in five years it will be revitalized by basics that we don’t have today such as a road network that will facilitate business, wealth and travel. The Irrawaddy River has grown by leaps and bounds with such new ships as the Sanctuary Ananda and Pandaw’s new ships.”

The onslaught of investment shows that the international travel industry is optimistic. Just last week, Hilton Worldwide opened the Hilton Nay Pyi Taw in the country’s new capital and announced that it was just the first of six properties in the Myanmar pipeline. Kempinski will open its first Burmese property, the Kempinski Hotel Nay Pyi Taw, on Nov. 1. The hotel will be the setting for Myanmar’s first hosting of the ASEAN Summit to be held in the country at the Myanmar International Convention Center (MICC).

Several figures from the military rule have turned their uniforms in and adopted the suits and ties of civilian political life. As you travel around Myanmar you can see pictures of them making generous donations to Buddhist Temples, the Burmese equivalent of kissing babies. The election will basically pit the allies of Aung Sang Suu Kyi against the military leadership. Aung San Suu Kyi is not allowed to run because her late husband was British. That’s the reason. No kidding.

Several banshee-like questions will haunt the booths on Election Day. Will it be an upright election? If the opposition wins, will the generals gracefully withdraw from power? These simple questions are endowed with complex consequences. When the military first took power they almost immediately wiped out one of Myanmar’s greatest resources, its teak forests. Basically they mowed them down without any replanting program.

Those forests, with patient nurturing, could be restored in the course of four or five decades. If tourism is handled similarly following the quick buck mass market approach, it too could go the way of teak wood. Over building, lack of environmental oversight and cronyism could nip Myanmar’s nascent tourism in the bud and reduce it to being just another chimeric kingdom that greedily preyed on resources and left no legacy.

While Myanmar’s direction is uncertain for now, there’s no uncertainty about the destination. This is a multi-faceted travel experience, a place of stirring natural beauty, historic and cultural complexity and a most hospitable population. Myanmar could sit with the top attractions in Asia in its own right and create a flow of travel that could seamlessly connect emerging destinations in East India to Southeast Asia, a most exciting prospect.