Slender travel margin for Cambodia

Cambodia’s travel agents association expects tourist arrivals, this year, to grow by just 0.3 to 0.5%, way off earlier forecasts.

Cambodia Association of Travel Agent president, Vandy Ho, told TTR Weekly, arrivals in the first seven months stood at 1.7 million, which represented a 0.3% growth, when compared to the same period last year.

Mr Vandy added that forward bookings from October  to March, especially in the key destination such as Siem Reap, were showing signs of improvement.  But he estimated a growth rate of just 0.3 or up to 0.5%, well below the 5.48% achieved last year.

At just 2.1 million tourist arrivals, 2008 was the first year that the country registered a single digit growth since records fell in 2004, when it reached 1 million arrivals for the first time and the boom continued through 2007.

Mr Vandy said a global economic crisis forced a slump in demand, especially from markets in Asia. Arrivals from China dropped 10% in the first seven months, Korea dropped 30%, Japan dropped 14%, while Thailand dropped 20 to 21% this year.

One market that shows promise is Vietnam, which delivered 180,000 trips, during January to July, representing a 43% growth.

Last year, arrivals from Vietnam ranked second at 209,516 trips, or a 67.02% increase over 2007.

The industry will organise a road show to Vietnam this October. In addition, India and Philippine are also on the list for road shows before December.

“By October we expect the government to sign off on the first Tourism Law, which will allow us to establish a Tourism Marketing and Promotion Board,” he explained.

“Once an officially recognised board takes over the task of marketing tourism, we should be able to improve promotions overseas.”