How did you find the idea of founding Pro Niti Travel?

Since I was young, I was always told that “Where you were born is not so important, but where did you reach” by my uncle that motivate me to try my best at school and I am always thinking I am going to try to be rich and I will inspire people who have the start point like me. I wanted to be rich, not to enjoy it, but to inspire people.

I started my working as a bellboy at a hotel and experienced as a receptionist, night auditors. I know myself that I love serving and helping people to make them feel comfortable, relax and have good memories. Then, I decided to be a tourist guide to show the international travelers around Myanmar and I joined the Travel company as operation assistant. At the same time, I am helping travelers to Myanmar by answering travel-related questions on Travel forum like TripAdvisor, Lonely planet, VirtualTourist, etc. whenever I have spare time. People got to know me on the forum and start contacting me to help them arrange their trip to Myanmar. Then, I start helping them and I found Pro Niti Travel in 2013. I am lucky that at that time Myanmar was getting attention from international travelers because of positive politics changes is happening.

How did you have the idea of branding Pro Niti and what does it mean?

Before I started that company, I always think what will make things getting better in our lives and communities, country, even the whole world. Then, I believe that we need two things; Professionalism and Ethics. Let me explain why. A judge has necessary skills, knowledge, common sense to perform as his professional but without ethics, he takes bribery, then make the wrong decision, there are a lot of bad consequences after that. We need these two things in our lives to make things getting better and peaceful life, continuous improvement. That is why I gave my company name as “Pro Niti”, Pro is an abbreviation of Professional and “Niti” is a Pali word (Buddhist language) which mean “Ethic”. Pro Niti is the “Professional Ethics” company.

What are your main challenges and how do you overcome them?

When I started the company, I just have hope and dreams. I didn’t have any business and/or management experiences and knowledge. However, I never give up and just read more, learn more from every resource I can have such as business-management-related blogs, watch video on YouTube by searching something I like to learn and join some classes while the struggle for the company and I have to work like 16 hours per day. There were some big whacks that might destroy the company to collapse and disappear (e.g. The whole office burnt down by the fire). Whatever challenges I face, I realized that first, “Hope” is important. I always try to have hope for myself and share it with the people who are working with me together. Second is the “People”, who are working with me because just with strong teamwork and trust each other, we can overcome the challenges. The third is the “perseverance”, no matter, whatever happens, keep moving forward and the hardworking always win. Hope, Team and our Perseverance helps us to overcome those challenges.

What is your company strategy to be a leading tour operator in Myanmar?

Actually, the word “leading tour operators” is not so specific and quite broad to measure. But we have our own values to delivers for the travelers.

“Customization”

We believe that everyone is unique and deserve to get their wants and preferences. At Pro Niti Travel, we design the trip based on our guest’s preferences, wishes that takes a very long time and need knowledge, patience, and passion. We choose well and train well our staffs for that.

“Value for money”

Since we decided this value as our core competitive edges, we start building the strong and strategic networks and partners across the country to provide the best price and now our guests are very much happy with our price over other companies.

“Peace-of-mind” Travel

We make sure to have assurance for our guests to travel with us before, during and even after the trip with our marketing, operations, and services.

“Responsible and Ethical Travel”

We make sure to use locals to create jobs and economies balancing, set policies to protect local culture and to reduce negative impacts to nature.

“Innovation and Technology Advancement”

At Pro Niti Travel, our daily mantra is “Continuous improvement”. We make sure to use technology to help us grow in every possible way we can think: Marketing, Operations, Office management and every possible sector we can think of.

What is unique about your business compared to other tour operators?

Tourism is very fragile, at the same time, easy to copy. But, at Pro Niti Travel, we believe that there are two things that are very difficult to copy from us are our “People” and our “Passion”. Based on the feedback and reviews online we got, what makes Pro Niti unique are our “People” and their passion to create lifetime memories for the travelers, helping and serving with our heart rather procedure and policies, at the same time, passion for our country.

How much are you committed to sustainable tourism in Myanmar?

Our vision is to be an ethical, socially-responsible adventure travel brand from Myanmar that creates treasured memories for the travelers and jobs for the local people. So, we committed 100% to sustainable tourism in Myanmar and we are planning to make sure our operation has fewer negative impacts for the environment as much as possible we can. We dedicated to use local people and their services in our tour programs and set policies to protect their culture as well.

Finally, what advice would you give to young entrepreneurs since you are the winner of the success-story award?

• Dream big, but start small
• Have Hope and Passion with Perseverance
• Be patience, we are not going to rich or successful just the day after the establishment of the company
• Embrace life-long-learning (if you are not learning today, you are left behind)
• Think for others: This is our jobs to think for others like how can I make better for my guests (my customers), what can I do to make my staffs work happily, what kind of thing I can provide to my staffs to let them make their jobs effectively,  how can I help the communities where my business is operating, this kind of thinking will help you back.
• Have your own values so you don’t need to compete with anyone else.