“Last year, the highest ever number of tourists—some 25,000—visited Ngapali,” said a staffer from a local travel agency. “This year we are calling it ‘The Gold Year of Ngapali’ as nearly 10,000 tourists have been there in the first two months.”

He explained that Ngapali now has about 20 hotels. In 2009 the beach town received just 11,200 visitors for the entire year. This year, 4,550 visitors were recorded in January alone, and in February some 4,900.

However, 385 km farther north, at the site of the ancient Arakanese kingdom of Mrauk-U, hotel owners are complaining that restricted tourist access to Sittwe and the outlying areas in the wake of communal violence last year is affecting their business severely.

“Foreigners need to submit applications for permission to visit the site,” said one local hotelier. “So they just don’t come.”

Sittwe travel agent Maung Aye Than said some 600 people in the tourism industry have lost their jobs since tourism was restricted.

He said that six hotels are situated close to the Buddhist ruins of Mrauk-U, and that some 4,000 to 8,000 tourists per year used to visit.

The Ministry of Hotels and Tourism says that Myanmar currently has 746 hotels and guest houses with some 27,000 rooms available nationwide. It claims that 1 million foreign tourists visited the country over the past year; however that figure is hugely inflated as it includes foreign businessmen, cross-border traders and visa stamp seekers, jade and gems merchants from China, and various NGO workers, journalists and entrepreneurs who enter on tourist visas.

Yangon Airport is, however, catering to more and more international flights, and has connections to Ngapali, allowing Yangon expats and sun-seeking Myanmar nationals the opportunity of quick travel to the palm-fringed white sands of the holiday resort.