The Tourism Promotion Society of Kanchanaburi, in Thailand, has said that it is looking at means to promote the province as a tourist hub for travellers en route to Myanmar.
The number of tourists that have been travelling through the province because of the rising popularity of the Dawei Project, a deep-sea port in Myanmar, has prompted authorities there to provide better tourism services. Plans are being drawn up to promote the province as a base to connect with the mega-project in Myanmar.
A group comprising of the region’s businessmen wants the local administration to offer services that will provide tourists with the motivation to stay overnight in the province, and thereby up-rate its status from merely being a transit destination. In future, the Kanchanaburi province is hoping to play a role as a centre to process travel documents or create travel packages to Dawei. Tourists visiting Dawei would then have to stay at Kanchanaburi before they go to Dawei and return to Thailand.
Tourist agencies operating in Kanchanaburi said that it was a good time to start offering tourism services because room supply and eating facilities in Dawei were neither convenient nor adequate. Currently there are about 10,000 rooms in the province, of which only 10 percent are four and five-star hotels.
Figures indicate that last year, seven million tourists visited the province, and five million of them were Thais. Most of the foreign tourists are either Russians or South Koreans. The province is now preparing to host a steady stream of business tourists that are expected to visit Dawei in future.
