FRAGILE NEW FRONTIER
Myeik Archipelago tourism debate
Afew hours’ boat ride from the port of Kawthaung, a school of dolphins nudged up to our 30-metre wooden junk. As the captain cut the engine, their silver backs heaved in and out of view; all else was still. Behind us, the Tanintharyi coastline — Myanmar’s skinny southern tail, fringing the Andaman Sea — had receded to a cut-out scene of blue hills.
Around us were islands topped with primordial rainforest and ringed with empty, white-sand beaches, limestone cliffs and mangrove thickets. Small wooden boats bobbed in sheltered bays, their crews snoozing until nightfall, when squid trapping would begin. Sea eagles circled high above. There was not a beep or a rumble from the mobile phones anywhere.
We were off the grid in the Myeik Archipelago, also known as the Mergui Archipelago — a chain of around 800 islands, spread over nearly 400 kilometres between the far-south ports of Myeik and Kawthaung in Myanmar.
The archipelago has been formally open for business since 1997, but thanks to red tape, isolation and erratic investor sentiment it is a seascape largely unblemished by Myanmar’s rush to modernise. It is one of the few places in Southeast Asia where visitors can — for a price — have whole beaches, or even entire islands, to themselves.
But the archipelago is at a crossroads. Divergent models of tourism are being pursued. Small, ecologically focused resorts, aimed mostly at Western travellers, have been opened, but large resorts, replete with casinos and yacht marinas, and aimed at a regional mass market, are also emerging. Companies and conglomerates, mostly Myanmar-based, have wrangled concessions for the most promising islands, though all but a few stand empty, awaiting developers.
Government policies that stress sustainability appear to favour the eco-resort model, as do internationally backed conservation plans for the area. The Tanintharyi Tourism Development Committee, a government-backed group of entrepreneurs led by local tycoon Serge Pun, is working on a master plan for sustainable tourism that will include protected areas and other safeguards recommended by the UK-based conservation charity Flora & Fauna International (FFI).
Unesco has declared the Myeik Archipelago ecological system to be of “outstanding universal value”. But beneath the water, it is far from pristine. An FFI biodiversity survey issued this year recorded widespread coral degradation due to dynamite fishing and anchor dragging. Large predatory species such as sharks and rays were “notably absent” — a sign of an ecosystem damaged by overfishing and practices like bottom trawling, it added.
However, these threats to biodiversity are not generally attributable to tourism. In fact, some believe responsible tourism could provide part of the answer. One is Bjorn Burchard, a Norwegian who moved to Myanmar in 1993 and has pursued various businesses — including a tour company called Moby Dick, on whose boat, the
MV Sea Gipsy, I visited in early May. Burchard was a pioneer of beach tourism on Koh Samui in Thailand in the 1980s. Then, he said, the island was a “paradise”. He left disillusioned by the hyper-development that had overtaken Samui and many other Thai islands catering to the mass market.
With localpartners, Burchard established the Boulder Bay Eco Resort, which occupies Boulder Island, near the outer reaches of the archipelago. The resort completed its second season this year, running entirely on solar energy, with no air-conditioning, which Burchard claims is unnecessary because of the plentiful sea breezes.
The island also hosts marine biologists from Project Manaia, a small Austria-based marine research organisation that has created coral nurseries, and the resort’s proceeds have been used to bring in students from Myeik University.
Other resort projects have also tried to project environmental credentials, albeit through more luxury offerings. Wa Ale Island Resort, a newly completed American investment, resulted from a 2015 Forestry Department tender for an eco-resort in Lampi Marine National Park, which lies within the archipelago.
Less is known about a boutique resort on Kyun Phila, expected to open next season, starting in November. This falls within the rapidly expanding tourism portfolio of Serge Pun, which also includes Burma Boating, a high-end cruise operator.
According to the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism, only four island resorts are fully licensed, but seven more are going through the application process. The licences impose requirements that frustrate some eco-minded developers. These include the need for at least 20 rooms, each equipped with flushing toilets (rather than, say, bio-toilets designed to convert human waste into gases and manure).
To add to confusion, this contradicts more environmentally progressive guidelines from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation, which must also certify hotel projects.
On top of regulatory requirements, eco-resorts in the archipelago have to square daunting startup costs — including bringing materials and staff from the mainland — with relatively small room numbers and the need for boats to ferry small groups of guests. From May to October, storms and monsoon rains make visits unappealing or unfeasible.
But they may face a still graver challenge to their business model: a reliance on Western tourists, who have begun to avoid the country after a string of boom years, due largely to international concern over the Rohingya refugee crisis in the country’s west.
Myanmar Tourism Federation figures show a drop of almost 20% in visitors from North America and Western Europe at Yangon’s international airport, during the high season from November to March, compared with the same period a year earlier.
However, the overall fall in Western visitors has been offset by a steady rise in regional arrivals — notably from China and Thailand, but also from Vietnam, the Philippines and Singapore — which may prompt investors to bet on very different models of tourism development.
For example, the archipelago’s oldest tourist development is also its most grandiose. Located not far from the Thai border town of Ranong, the 200-room Grand Andaman, formerly called the Andaman Club, has since the 1990s catered largely to Thais seeking legal gambling. A smaller “casino island”, called Treasure Island, is also close to Kawthaung.
Both are included in day trips by Thai tourists from Ranong, which have been increasing faster than island stays. The hotels and tourism ministry recorded 43,218 foreign overnight visitors and 15,281 local visitors to Kawthaung and the islands under its administration in 2017, compared with 325,777 day-trippers crossing the marine border.
This taste of mass tourism has already affected the local environment. Local residents say that snorkellers have seriously damaged the coral reefs around Cocks Comb Island, which is featured on most day trips.
“If we don’t have a good plan for tourism, all the islands will be damaged in a few years because of the carelessness of visitors,” said Zau Lunn, marine programme manager for FFI.
Even so, the archipelago has been the graveyard of several large tourism projects. On Chin Kait (Burmese for “mosquito bite”), stands the ruin of a resort begun by Tay Za, a prominent military-linked tycoon. Though several bungalows and a jetty were built, it never formally opened.
In 2015, local media reported a US$1.2-billion plan by Zochwell Group of Singapore, now renamed Geollion Holdings, to develop Salone Island, near Kawthaung, into a “new Phuket”, with luxury hotels, a casino and a bridge to the mainland. Little has been heard since of the LuxDream Island project, but chief commercial officer Gareth Chin told the Nikkei Asian Review in mid-May that the plan is still alive.
He said the company “practically had to start everything from scratch” after a democratically elected government took office in Myanmar in early 2016. He said the chief minister of Tanintharyi Region had signed land conversion documents in early May, and forecast approval from the Myanmar Investment Commission by the end of 2018. A $30-million initial phase — comprising a marina, hotel, and clubhouse — would then take roughly three years to complete, he said.
As with development elsewhere in Myanmar, the hype about the archipelago outpaces reality. But the rate of resort construction is quickening. For now, ecolodges appear to have the upper hand over developments such as casino islands, but a sustainable tourism policy can only succeed with strong investor backing. Much depends on the outlook for returns.
However, in the current tumult enveloping Myanmar’s tourism market, that is anyone’s guess.
“If we don’t have a good plan for tourism, all the islands will be damaged in a few years because of the carelessness of visitors” ZAU LUNN Flora & Fauna International