The debate about whether it is appropriate to visit Burma is over. It ended when pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), changed their policy from calling for a tourism boycott, which they had done since 1996, to calling for “responsible tourism.”

The questions now are: How does one travel to Burma responsibly? And what does Burma have to do to promote, or at least make possible, responsible tourism?

Yeni is news editor of the Irrawaddy magazine. He can be reached at [email protected].

For this to happen, however, individuals must be able go where they would like to go, see what they would like to see, speak to who they would like to speak to and spend where they would like to spend, all without too much inconvenience and discomfort (not every responsible tourist can be expected to be a hardcore traveler).

In addition, truly "responsible travel" would support local businesses and create income for local people, minimize the potentially negative cultural and environmental impacts of tourism while helping to conserve the country’s natural and cultural heritage, and at least indirectly support some of those who cannot support themselves due to age or disability.

This is not an impossible mission. Responsible tourism is effectively practiced nowadays in neighboring countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. And the results speak for themselves: Burma received about 300,000 visitors in 2010, while Thailand regularly receives some 14 million visitors a year, Vietnam receives about four million and each of Cambodia and Laos about 2 million.

So why is it that Burma cannot follow the same path towards attracting tourists and achieve the same results as its neighbors?

To begin with, the fundamentals of tourism in Burma need to be reformed and developed before responsible tourists can, as Suu Kyi says, come to see and study the situation.

First, unlike its neighboring countries who successfully promote tourism, Burma is not a member state of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), which has called on all tourism stakeholders, including those in the government and private sectors, to integrate the principles of the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism in their relevant legislation, professional practices and codes of conduct.

Second, Burma should reduce its restrictions on tourists. Much of the country is off limits to foreign travelers, and many land routes to the more remote areas that tourists can visit are closed. Some routes are unsafe due to ongoing conflicts between the government and ethnic armed groups, but bureaucratic steps such as applying for permission to visit those restricted areas that are considered safe are unnecessary and discourage visitors from seeing the true Burma. In addition, allowing tourists to enter the country by land, rather than forcing them to fly, would increase the number of non-package tourist arrivals.

Third, the Burmese government should reform its overall system of the transportation, which is in a poor state. Many independent travelers complain that they cannot make an accurate travel plan because buses and cars frequently break down and trains are often delayed.

Even travel by domestic airplane is not a convenient and comfortable choice. For example, in order to get a seat on an Air Bagan flight to Rangoon from Myitkyina, the capital city of Burma’s northern Kachin State, one Thai traveler had to fill out an application at the airline office and wait to see if she would be awarded the seat. Luckily, she got on the flight, but upon her return to Thailand said: “I couldn’t believe it was an airline office.”  This does not sound like someone who will soon visit the country again.

The patience of travelers to Burma is also tested by security checks at local airports, which lack basic modern technology, so passengers must have every bag checked by hand.  once on board the plane, passengers cannot even be sure that their itinerary will remain as planned—many flights either add or remove scheduled stops after taking off. For example, a Rangoon-Bagan route can become a Rangoon-Mandalay-Bagan route, with the resulting delay in arrival time.

In a country where anything can happen at any time, tourists need to patient. But punctuality is important to tourists with flight connections and pre-booked travel itineraries, and incessant delays either push travelers towards packaged tours or turn them away from Burma and towards other neighboring countries.

Finally, and most essentially, Burma needs to develop a sound and stable system of currency exchange. Due to Western sanctions, visitors can’t use credit cards and travelers checks in Burma. In an emergency, some hotels in Rangoon will provide a cash advance on a credit card through Singapore, but they will charge a commission ranging from 7 percent up to 30 percent. And since the government exchange rate of approximately six kyat to the dollar is nowhere near the true rate of approximately 800 kyat to the dollar, tourists are forced to rely on shady currency traders who can offer the unofficial “street” exchange rate.

 “When the fluctuation of the rate is unstable, tourists ask why, and it is difficult to explain. Of course, this leads to misunderstandings and confusion with the tourists,” a Rangoon-based tourist guide said.

Burmese working in the tourism industry are also embarrassed when they have to explain to foreign visitors why it is necessary to barter sweets, tissues, cigarettes, shampoo and other items in order to change small currency notes, of which there are very few in circulation.

One other important issue that affects tourism is government control over information and the Internet. In a report released by the US research group Freedom House called “Freedom on the Net 2011,” Burma ranked second to last. Burmese authorities even encourage the staff at Internet cafes to view the screens of customers in order to detect and report circumvention of the country’s draconian laws governing use of the Internet. Fortunately, however, most staff members at Internet cafes are tourist-friendly, even offering proxy addresses as a way to attract and retain customers. But the slow speed of public Internet access still annoys most travelers.

To make communications matters worse, Burmese authorities have ordered all public and private Internet cafés to stop overseas communication through VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calls, deeming them illegal under existing legislation. Once again, only the most seasoned travelers will be comfortable visiting a country as unstable as Burma where they do not have easy access to information and the unfettered ability to communicate with the outside world.

These issues are just tip of the iceberg of the numerous challenges facing Burmese tourism, but if improvements can be made, Burma can become a highly attractive destination for individual travelers. Just as all travelers agree that Burma is not currently a convenient place to visit, they also agree that the people of Burma are friendly, caring and helpful to foreign visitors.

“To speak with Burmese people, travel with them, sleep in the same place with them and spend all of our time with them was the best experience I have ever had as a traveler,” noted Lucie Durcova, an independent traveler, on the Czech-based website www.ecoburma.com,  which promotes responsible tourism to Burma. “In no other country have I ever felt so ‘at home’ among local people,” she wrote.

Currently, however, very few visitors that are arriving in Burma are experiencing true Burmese hospitality at the local level. As so often happens, people waiting for a green light from a prominent leader selectively listen to hear what they want to hear and block out the rest. Apparently, most of those wishing to visit Burma have heard Suu Kyi say that “it’s okay to go,” but have conveniently ignored her caveats to “do so responsibly” and “don’t take package tours.”

Tourist arrivals in Burma reached 106,795 during the first three months of 2011, up 24 percent from the same period in 2010 according to official statistics, but most visitors came either on package tours or for business or social purposes. And while Burma's tourism revenue officially hit US $196 million in 2009, almost double what it was in 2002, most would agree that very little of this money was spent at the local level—it mostly benefited the transportation services, hotels and restaurants used by package tour companies that are owned either directly or indirectly by the government, the military or their cronies.

If done right, tourism can be an opportunity for much-needed economic development for Burma, all of Burma, as well as a way for foreign guests to witness the ancient culture and experience the tremendous hospitality that the country has to offer. It can also be a method for showing the members of the regime who may be inclined towards change that opening up to the outside world will not bring about the apocalypse that the paranoid hardliners predict.

But for Burmese tourism to be done right, the government must make the changes necessary to allow responsible travelers to conveniently visit the country, and those tourists that do visit must listen to all of what Suu Kyi said and demand that their stay benefit the Burmese population as a whole, and not just the powerful elite.

If both these things occur, then the Burmese people can happily say to visitors: “Welcome to the Golden Land.” But if either does not occur, then visitors to Burma will be walking right into a tourist trap.