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Travellers hoping to catch a glimpse of the glittering Shwedagon Pagoda or hear the "tinkly temple-bells" of Kipling's Road to Mandalay might one day be able to book into a Westin or a Marriott, thanks to Myanmar's emergence from political isolation.
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Starwood Hotels & Resorts (HOT.N: Quote,Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) -- which runs chains such as Westin, Sheraton and Le Meridien -- and Marriott International (MAR.N:Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) both said during the World Economic Forum in Davos they wanted to start running hotels in Myanmar, a country tightly controlled by the military for five decades until last year.
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The former Burma, one of the most isolated countries in Asia, is being welcomed back into the international fold after two decades of sanctions, thanks to democratic reforms including the release of political prisoners by President Thein Sein.
"Marriott would love to be there if conditions are right," said Arne Sorenson, president and CEO-elect of Marriott International. "Burma has captured people's imagination for decades."
Myanmar has a huge amount to offer travellers seeking an exotic destination, with deserted islands, golden temples and cultural sites unblemished by the rapid development seen elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
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English-speaking schoolchildren grew up with Rudyard Kipling's wistful poem of "mist on the rice-fields", "the old pagoda looking lazy at the sea", and "a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land".
The hotel chains in Myanmar now are Asian-based companies such as Shangri-la Hotels & Resorts, which runs Traders Hotel, Singapore's Sedona Hotels International, and GHM Luxury Hotels, a Burmese company that owns the Strand in the commercial capital, Yangon, formerly Rangoon.
The few five-star hotels outside of Yangon are mostly in beach resorts or tourist centres such as Mandalay and Bagan.
Myanmar is hugely underdeveloped, with an economy in tatters and infrastructure that is rudimentary at best.
Years of economic mismanagement by the military, coupled with U.S. and European sanctions imposed due to the regime's human rights abuses, have left Myanmar in poverty. A third of its estimated 60 million people live on a dollar a day.
But despite the sanctions, most of which remain in place for now, the number of tourists visiting Myanmar is surging. The government expects the trend to continue but admits it has a dire shortage of accommodation.
During the fiscal 2010-2011 (April-March), 424,000 people visited Myanmar, according to official data, and its 570 hotels and 160 guesthouses are stretched to the limit, with a total capacity of just 24,692 rooms.
Compare neighbouring Thailand, which has a similar climate and landscape to Myanmar but more than 4,000 hotels and resorts. It attracted 19 million visitors last year.
CAPACITY CHALLENGES
