Cambodia expects to welcome 4.6m arrivals in 2014

Cambodia expects to welcome 4.6m arrivals in 2014

Cambodia is expecting to receive 4.6 million international visitors this year, the country’s minister of tourism, Thong Khon has said.

Speaking at a tourism conference on Saturday, the minister predicted that the pace of growth would accelerate in the second half of the year, and that the country would end 2014 with 10% more international visitors than the 4.2m it achieved last year.

“In the first six months of this year, more than 2.2m foreigners visited Cambodia, up 5.2% over the same period last year,” Thong was quoted saying by China’s Xinhua news agency. “Based on this figure, we expect that the nation will welcome about 4.6m foreign tourists in 2014.”

In the long-term, Thong said Cambodia is targeting eight million international visitors in 2020, generating tourism revenues of US$5 billion.

And much of this growth is expected to be driven by China. The minister revealed that 463,000 mainland Chinese visited Cambodia last year, up 39% year-on-year. And this figure is expected to rise sharply in the coming years.

“We project that around 800,000 Chinese will visit Cambodia in 2015 and nearly two million in 2020,” Thong said.

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