by Wanwisa Ngamsangchaikit

SIEM REAP, 24 July 2015: 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.”

To 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.

source: http://www.ttrweekly.com/site/2015/07/tourism-target-eludes-cambodia/

Just talk to TAT. They will teach you how to pad the numbers.

Do we now have to listen to the Campucha tourism figures? Please no!! not another Madame.

Just talk to TAT. They will teach you how to pad the numbers.

We can lend you our head of TAT to teach you the ropes. He/She knows how to hang themselves with numbers. No put their foot in their mouth.,

in Thailand it really hasn't sunk in in order to boost tourism one must make concessions give the tourists a fair crack of the whip give them something they can say they enjoyed and would come back again for look after tourists and you will get repeat business.

For the past 7 years and late 2014 it cost me $20.00 for a visa to enter Cambodia for a week and this year in June it cost me $30.00 for the same period. A 50% increase is enough for me to delete this country from my visiting list.