Cambodia tourist arrivals up

Phnom Penh : Cambodia greeted 333,890 Chinese visitors in 2012, up 35 percent year-on-year, and during the first four months of this year, some 174,150 Chinese visited Cambodia, up 55 percent compared with the same period last year.

Overall Cambodia has attracted 1.79 million foreign visitors in the first five months of this year (2013), up 19 percent compared with the 1.5 million tourists in the same period last year, the country’s tourism ministry said Tuesday.

During the January-May period, Vietnam remains top of the chart with 341,000 visitors, up 11 percent year-on-year, followed by South Korea with 215,200 visitors, up 5 percent, and China with 202,400 tourists, up 53 percent, according to the ministry.

Its neighboring countries, Laos and Thailand, ranked No. 4 and 5 respectively. About 146,300 Laotians and 96,000 Thais visited Cambodia during the five-month period, up 80 percent and 23 percent respectively.

About 49 percent of visitors came to Cambodia by air, 49 percent by land and the rest by waterway.

Tourism is one of the sectors supporting the economy in this impoverished Southeast Asian nation. Last year, the country received some 3.5 million foreigners, earning more than 2 billion U.S. dollars.

Tourism Minister Thong Khon said at a tourism forum on June 19 that the country expected to receive around 4 million foreign tourists this year.

“We see China as a huge market for Cambodian tourism,” he said. “Under the strategy, we target 600,000 Chinese tourists in 2015 and 1.3 million in 2018.”

To reach the goal, Cambodia would continue broadening promotion of Cambodian tourism destinations to China and encouraging more direct flight connection between the two countries, he said.

According to the strategic plan, the country would prepare entry-exit application forms and announcements at airports in Chinese language, write signs on main roads in Chinese language, study to establish China Town and train more Chinese speaking tour guides.

Tourism Minister Thong Khon said at the seminar that it was important to encourage owners of hotels, restaurants and tourism resorts to use three languages–Khmer, English and Chinese–on billboards, or promotional leaflets or brochures.- ETN