Myanmar will conduct Russian language training as part of its bid to help boost tourism industry, the local weekly Voice journal reported Sunday.
The three-month training starting later this month will be given by Russian lecturers, the report said.
The Russian language training for tourism is the first of its kind conducted in Myanmar after others'.
Meanwhile, tour operators in Myanmar have stressed the need to reinforce skilled tourist guides with mastering of different languages to meet the demand of tourists visiting the country, reported Xinhua .
As Myanmar has abundance of tourism resources that attract world travelers, availability of enough skilled tourist guides in respective sectors plays a more important role in the development of tourism industry, said hoteliers.
Since the Myanmar Hotels and Tourism Ministry started conducting tourist guides training courses in 1992, four years after the country opened to the outside world, it has so far brought out more than 6,000 tourist guides mastering languages of English, Japanese, French, Chinese, Thai, German, Italian and Korean in addition to Russian, according to local reports.
Official statistics showed that tourist arrivals in Myanmar in the fiscal year 2007-08 totaled 288,776, of whom 131,784 came by air, while 154,500 arrived by land across border.
In the first quarter of fiscal 2008-09, 51,872 tourist arrivals were registered.
Meanwhile, contracted foreign investment in the sector of hotels and tourism has so far amounted to 1.06 billion U.S. dollars since Myanmar started to open to such investment in late 1988, accounting for 7.1 percent of the country's total foreign investment.