Tourism target eludes Cambodia

SIEM REAP  Cambodia tourism will miss its target of 5 million arrivals this year due to a poor global economic outlook.
Agence Kampuchea Presse quoted Tourism Minister, Thong Khon, saying the negative economic situation worldwide and other negative factors included terrorism and the outbreaks of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), along with Russia’s economic crisis could affect the country tourism.
He warned that country might not achieve its targets this year.
“I doubt if the country will be able to welcome some 5 million foreign visitors in 2015 as expected. However, the foreign arrivals will still exceed last year’s 4.5 million visits.”
inside no 2To boost tourism, some tourism experts have called for a liberal visa exemption policy. Other suggestions include offering visa discounts and creating a single-visa programme that would be valid for all ASEAN countries. They are long shots as it takes considerable lead-time to implement regional visas and the offer visa-free travel would not have a positive impact until this October when the peak season starts.
China could save the target aspirations as it could easily considerably more visitors for Siem Reap and Angkor Wat tours, but prices would have to be competitive. It would also require more charter flights and Chinese tour operators would expect investment or price concessions that would give them control over chunks of room inventory in th heritage town.
According to tourism ministry data, January to April, this year, the country welcomed 1,668,975 international travellers up 4.3% from 1,600,612 visits in 2014.
Last year, the country welcomed 4,502,775 international travellers improving 7.0% from 4,210,165 visits in 2013.
The top 10 source markets were Vietnam, China, Laos, South Korea, Thailand, Japan, Malaysia, France, the United States, and Australia.

sourced:ttrweekly.com