PHNOM PENH, Apr 2 (NNN-AKP) – Cambodia received a total of 151,680 foreign visitors in the first quarter of 2022, an increase of 114 percent from 70,901 arrivals, recorded in the same period last year, a senior tourism official said yesterday.
Kong Sopheareak, director of Tourism Statistics Department, at the Ministry of Tourism, said that, of the total, 86,588 of them arrived in the country by air, during the Jan-Mar period, up 158 percent year-on-year.
“Neighbouring Vietnam topped the chart of international tourist arrivals to Cambodia, followed by Thailand and China,” he said.
“During the first quarter of this year, there were 1,012 flights to the capital, Phnom Penh, 144 flights to Siem Reap province, and 55 flights to Preah Sihanouk province,” he said.
Sopheareak said, the sharp rise in the number of foreign visitors came, after the country fully resumed its socio-economic activities and reopened its borders to fully vaccinated travellers, without quarantine, since the middle of Nov last year, following most of its 16 million population having been vaccinated against COVID-19.
“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 600,000 and 700,000 international tourists in 2022, an expected rise from only 200,000 in 2021,” he said.
Meanwhile, Angkor Archaeological Park, the kingdom’s most popular tourist destination, registered 19,840 foreign visitors in the first quarter of 2022, up 342 percent from 4,482 in the same period last year, the state-owned Angkor Enterprise said in a statement.
The park earned a gross revenue of 815,575 U.S. dollars from ticket sales, during the Jan-Mar period, an increase of 340 percent from a year earlier, the statement said.
Located in the north-western Siem Reap province, the Angkor Archaeological Park was inscribed on the World Heritage List of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 1992.
Tourism is one of the four pillars supporting Cambodia’s economy. The country attracted up to 6.61 million international tourists in 2019, generating a gross revenue of 4.92 billion U.S. dollars, according to the Ministry of Tourism.– NNN-AKP