Myanmar tourism officials expect a slight increase in the number of visitors to the military-ruled country when the peak season begins next month despite a boycott call by pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, a semi-official weekly reported Monday.

“In my opinion, this high season will have slightly more tourists than last year but it won’t be much different, about five percent more than last year,” Su Su Tin, managing director of Exotissimo Travel told the Myanmar Times.

Tourists have visited Myanmar in growing numbers in recent years despite calls for a tourism boycott by detained Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Nearly 657,000 visited the country last year, up from nearly 600,000 in 2003, according to tourism authorities.

Maarten Groeneveld, managing director of Diethelm Travel, Myanmar, told the newspaper that tourism to Southeast Asia generally had yet to recover from the December 26 tsunami, which spared Myanmar but killed nearly 5,400 people in neighboring Thailand.

“I do not see an immediate increase as Asia and in particular Thailand, is still much affected by the after-effects of the tsunami,” he said.

“This always has an effect on the surrounding countries as the spin-off from tourists travelling to Thailand will be less.”

Groeneveld said more tourists were visiting from South America, South Africa and Eastern Europe, but that travellers from other Asian countries were Myanmar’s main target for growth.

“It is important to keep working on increased flights to the region and beyond, to make Myanmar more accessible,” he told the weekly.

Tourists have been attracted by Myanmar’s isolation, which has left its beaches undeveloped and its air unpolluted, as well as by the centuries-old ruins of temples at palaces at Bagan.

Pro-democracy leaders believe that in a country under strict military control for decades, tourist dollars help prop up the military regime.