In an attempt to lure more tourists after arrivals declined this year due to a regional outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, the government is focusing its efforts on China, Tourism Minister Veng Sereyvuth said Thursday after returning from a World Tourism Organization conference in Beijing.
“To talk about tourist flow is to talk about the Chinese,” he said. “The Chinese have money.”
Of the nearly 500,000 tourists who arrived here this year, 40,000 came from China. In 2000, the government signed a bilateral agreement with China to waive visa fees in an effort to put Cambodia on the map as a Chinese tourist destination.
The way to increase the number of Chinese tourists, officials say, is to increase the number of flights between the two countries. Currently, Chinese tourists cannot fly directly from Beijing to Phnom Penh—only Hong Kong, Shanghai and Guangzhou have direct flights to the capital. “I believe that a direct flight from Beijing to Phnom Penh will happen soon, but I am not exactly sure when,” said Thong Khon, secretary of state at the Tourism Ministry.
Tourism officials returned from the conference in Beijing, where the UN-sponsored global tourism body named Cambodia as host country and chairman of the East Asia Pacific Commission, a group of 14 Asian members. The group’s first meeting will take place in Siem Reap in mid-2004.
At the Beijing meeting, the UN expressed concerns over recent reports of sex tourism in Asia. “Cambodia will never, ever” allow sex tourism, Veng Sereyvuth said.
Tourist arrivals are down 14 percent compared with the same period last year. Officials attribute the drop to SARS and the Iraq war.
in Iraq. Thong Khon said the government expects fewer tourists than the nearly 800,000 arrivals last year.
