The UMTA Travel Fair 2026, held on June 13–14 at Yangon’s Sedona Hotel. Yangon’s prestigious Sedona Hotel played host to one of Myanmar’s most significant tourism industry gatherings of the year, as the Union of Myanmar Travel Association (UMTA). Held under the supervision of the Ministry of Hotels, Tourism and Culture, and supported by the Myanmar Tourism Federation and its brotherhood organisations, the event brought together more than 70 exhibition booths representing over 20 countries, making it a genuinely international platform for tourism trade, networking, and partnership building in the heart of Southeast Asia.
A Platform Built for Business and Beyond at UMTA Travel Fair 2026
The UMTA Travel Fair 2026 was designed from the outset to be far more than a conventional travel exhibition. While the floor featured an impressive array of booths showcasing destinations, tour packages, and travel services, the event’s organisers were deliberate in creating structured opportunities for substantive business engagement. The fair incorporated dedicated Business-to-Business networking sessions, allowing local Myanmar travel companies to meet directly with international counterparts, tourism boards, and potential buyers and sellers from across the globe.
Daw May Thet Lwin, General Secretary of UMTA, outlined the breadth of participation at the event. “More than 50 local companies have participated in the event, along with tourism booths by Malaysia and Nepal, and travel agencies and tour operators from 20 countries such as France, Slovakia, Romania, Spain, Malaysia and Indonesia,” she said. The presence of official tourism board representatives from Malaysia, Nepal, Korea, and Russia alongside private sector operators from France, Spain, Slovakia, Romania, India, and Indonesia gave the fair a genuinely multilateral character that extended well beyond the region.
Strategic Goals: Connectivity, Arrivals, and Market Expansion
The fair’s overarching objectives were clearly articulated by its organisers. The event aimed to boost both domestic and overseas travel networks, accelerate the development of Myanmar’s tourism industry, encourage greater inflows of foreign tourists, and expand Myanmar’s reach into international travel markets that have historically been underserved by direct marketing and trade connections.
For Myanmar’s tourism sector, which has faced significant headwinds in recent years, the fair represented an important opportunity to re-engage with the global travel trade and signal the country’s readiness to welcome international visitors. The participation of well-established Myanmar agencies including Adventure Myanmar, APT, and Asia Golden Mines provided further evidence of the domestic industry’s resilience and its appetite for new international partnerships.
Nepal Takes Centre Stage: NATTA Represents at High-Level Panel At UMTA travel Fair
One of the fair’s most notable highlights was the participation of Nepal at both the exhibition and panel discussion levels. Kumar Mani Thapaliya, President of the Nepal Association of Tour and Travel Agents (NATTA), represented Nepal at the event and took part in a distinguished panel discussion that brought together senior figures from across the Asia-Pacific tourism industry.
The panel, moderated by Kyaw Win Tun, featured an impressive lineup of regional tourism leaders, including Ravi Gosain, President of the Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO); Ajun Shroff, Advisor to the Philippine Tour Operators Association (PHILTOA); Lysandar Jaison P. Yang, President of the Philippine Travel Agencies Association (PTAA); and Mary Ann Ong, Vice President of the Philippine Inbound Tour Operators Association (PILTOA).
During the discussion, Thapaliya shared Nepal’s compelling and hard-won tourism recovery journey, a narrative shaped by successive crises including the devastating 2015 earthquake, years of political instability, and the global disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. He highlighted how Nepal’s tourism sector had demonstrated remarkable resilience, driven by innovation and a strong and sustained partnership between the public and private sectors. The presentation drew considerable interest from fellow panellists and the audience, offering Nepal’s experience as a model of recovery that holds lessons for other destinations navigating their own post-crisis rebounds.
Regional Cooperation at the Forefront
The panel discussion reflected a broader theme that ran through the UMTA Travel Fair 2026, the recognition that regional tourism cooperation is not merely desirable but essential for sustainable growth across Southeast and South Asia. With tourism flows between India, Nepal, the Philippines, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Indonesia growing steadily, the fair provided a timely forum for tourism associations and operators to align on shared priorities, explore joint marketing opportunities, and build the personal relationships that underpin successful long-term business partnerships.
The presence of multiple national tourism association presidents and senior representatives in a single room, and their willingness to engage openly on recovery strategies, market challenges, and collaborative opportunities, underscored the maturity and ambition of the region’s tourism industry at this stage of its post-pandemic evolution.
Looking Ahead: Myanmar’s Tourism Ambitions
The success of the UMTA Travel Fair 2026 sends a positive signal about Myanmar’s tourism sector and its determination to re-establish meaningful connections with the international travel trade. With participation from over 20 countries and a packed programme of exhibitions, B2B meetings, and panel discussions, the two-day event demonstrated that appetite for engagement with Myanmar as a destination remains strong among international operators and tourism boards.
For the UMTA and its members, the fair is both a milestone and a starting point, a moment to take stock of the relationships built and the partnerships initiated, and to translate the energy of two days in Yangon’s Sedona Hotel into bookings, itineraries, and arrivals in the months and years ahead.
