There are well-known cultural, traditional and religious events which have lasted for hundreds of years, such as pagoda festivals at the representative temples in Bagan. On the other hand, to discover other aspects of Bagan, “Bagan Photo Festival 2017” was held as a tourism promotion event which domestic and foreign tourists, and local people participated in. A total of 439 photos were submitted and more than 20,000 “Likes” were received on the Facebook. Through these photos, some unknown images of Bagan have appeared. It is expected that the festival will be held regularly with the cooperation from various sectors.

Promotion materials are key tools to connect Bagan and tourists. Through this project, more than 10 kinds of materials have been created such as a tourist map, postcards, a photobook, newsletters etc. and distributed at a temporary tourist information center, major hotels and restaurants in Bagan,as well as Yangon and Mandalay. Further revisions and improvements for each promotion material will be expected to be made based on the feedback from tourists.

To get tourist information through the internet is an indispensable action especially for FIT (Foreign Independent Tourists). Since there has not been an official website which disseminated tourism information specialized on Bagan, the website “Wonder Bagan” was launched on March, 2016 for potential customer from near and far. The website features tourist spots, hotels, restaurants, and other useful information.Through the partnership from public, private and local society, the website is expected to be sustainable by expanding the contents, multiplying languages, and operating lively and reliably.

Community participation is indispensable for sustainable tourism development in Bagan. In this sense, CBT can be a potential tourism product that benefits the local people not only through selling traditional handicrafts, but also giving more experience for tourists to communicate with local people. Through this pilot project, JET conducted 20 cooking tours at West Pwa Saw Village, 20 group tours at Thae Pyin Taw Village, and more than 500 tourists were mobilized. It is expected that CBT will be one of the tools to make a sustainable society through tourism development.