Cambodia eyes to serve 1.3 million foreign tourists in 2022

Angkor Wat, a UNESCO world heritage site, is the tourist icon of Cambodia. (Photo: Khmer Times)

Recovering fast from the COVID-19 downfall, Cambodia is banking on increased arrival of foreign tourists this year, compared to the last two years.

According to Rathasak, the Southeast Asian nation served over 500,000 foreign visitors in the first half of this year, and this was a good comeback compared to the number of 200,000 tourist arrivals last year..

COVID-19 was a big lesson as Cambodian people learned to coexist with a pandemic, he said, hoping that people who left the tourism sector would come back and rebuild their businesses or careers.

For Cambodia, 2022 started well as it got the chance to organise the ASEAN Tourism Forum (ATF), which was attended by 3,000 delegates from different parts of the region. Held in Sihanoukville, the forum was the first major tourism event in the region in the past three years.

The government has taken initiatives and solutions to help the tourism sector revive with various incentives, the latest being the Tourism Recovery Co-Financing Scheme, launched on July 1, for the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) where an entrepreneur could avail up to 400,000 USD for rebuilding the business.

Next year could also make a lot of difference to Cambodia’s tourism sector as the country will host the Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games) in May and the Para Games in June.

The country set to welcome half a million visitors during SEA Games,  Rathasak said./.