MRTA 2018

The official Awards Ceremony was held at the Chatrium Hotel in Yangon on 11th December 2018. This marks the second year of the Myanmar Responsible Tourism Awards and the standard of entries demonstrates the continued passion and dedication of local tourism businesses to lead the way in responsible tourism standards.

The evening started off with an opening speech by U Naing Win, Director MoHT Yangon, followed by Ko Nyunt, Chairman of the Myanmar Responsible Tourism Institute (MRTI), which organises the awards and a welcoming speech by Yu Yu Naing, Private Sector Development Adviser, Department for International Development (DFID).

Ko Nyunt said: “Our purpose in organising the Awards is to encourage change in the industry and to single out for recognition those who are taking responsibility and can evidence that they are having a positive impact towards responsible and sustainable tourism in Myanmar. These awards recognise those who are working towards Myanmar tourism industry developing in a way that promotes our unique environment, our culture and our people.”

Yu Yu Naing added in her speech: “DFID has also supported MRTA to integrate poverty reduction as a cross-cutting theme in all categories of the MRTA. This is to recognise those businesses that have developed inclusive business models that can inspire others. Tourism doesn’t necessarily help these people if visitors only stay in their hotels and move between a few key destinations with flights and cars.”

Programme Manager, Johanna Pelikan, added: “All of the MRTA 2018 winners and runner-ups can be extremely proud of themselves.”, she continued with “This project would not have been possible without the meaningful cooperation and partners and the most important point our participants, the pioneers, the people who try very hard every day to develop Myanmar’s tourism industry in a sustainable way, so resources will be available for future generation in a country where people want to live, work and travel to.”

This year, MRTI awarded seven winners in six different categories. Each applicant went through a shortlisting process. After this, shortlisted candidates were visited on-site by our assessors, who verified the claims made in their application. Followed by an independent judging panel meeting, to identify the winners. The judging panel consisted of seven travel and tourism experts.

Congratulations to all the 2018 winners, runners-up and applicants.

Find MRTA 2018 Winners here.