In the first four months of this year, Cambodia welcomed a total of 241,485 foreign tourists, as stated in a report that was made public on Thursday by the Ministry of Tourism. This represents an increase of 191 percent when compared to the same time period in the previous year. The huge increase may be ascribed to the country’s complete reopening, which was encouraged by high immunization rates, according to Kong Sopheareak, head of the statistics section within the Ministry.
In the first four months of this year, Cambodia welcomed a total of 241,485 foreign tourists, as stated in a report that was made public on Thursday by the Ministry of Tourism. This represents an increase of 191 percent when compared to the same time period in the previous year.
According to the report, approximately 131,864 tourists arrived in the Southeast Asian country by air during the period of January-April, representing 54.6% of the total tourists. This represents an increase of 244% year-on-year. The report also stated that neighboring Vietnam topped the chart of international tourist arrivals to the kingdom, followed by Thailand and China. This information was obtained from the Xinhua news agency.
The huge increase may be ascribed to the country’s complete reopening, which was encouraged by high immunization rates, according to Kong Sopheareak, head of the statistics section within the Ministry.
According to what he told Xinhua, “With our quarantine-free policy, we’re confident that tourists will consider Cambodia as a key destination for their vacations, and we hope to attract between 800,000 and 1 million international tourists in 2022, an expected increase from only 200,000 in 2021.” In 2021, there were only 200,000 tourists visiting Cambodia.
The economy of the kingdom is supported by four main pillars, one of which being tourism. Before the epidemic hit, according to the Ministry of Tourism, the country was expecting to receive up to 6.6 million foreign visitors in 2019, who would have spent a combined total of 4.92 billion USD.
Since November of last year, when the majority of Cambodia’s 16 million population had been immunized against COVID-19, the country’s borders have been reopened to fully vaccinated travelers without the requirement of a quarantine. Cambodia has fully resumed all of its social and economic activities.
The Cambodian Ministry of Health reports that there have been no newly reported cases of COVID-19 in the nation in the previous 26 days, and there are presently only three instances of the virus that are considered to be active.