Tourism

They thought the days of scenic sunsets ruined by the noise and pollution of dredgers on the Tatai River were over, but villagers and business owners in the popular tourism destination now say they were duped in a promise from ruling party Senator Ly Yong ...

Malaysia-based Air Asia will begin offering travel services in Cambodia, and may expand its flights to neighbouring countries, company officials said. The airline launched its first Air Asia Travel and Service Center in Phnom Penh yesterday. Air Asia will partner with tour operator Mekong Discovery. So Mara, ...

Year-end travelers have fully booked Sihanoukville province’s hotels and guesthouses for the first-ever Sea Festival, which is expected to attract thousands of visitors this year, tourism officials said. Tith Chantha, general director at the Ministry of Tourism, confirmed that all hotel and guesthouse rooms were booked ...

Foreign tourist arrivals in the Kingdom increased by more than 15 per cent between January and October compared to the same period in 2010, Ministry of Tourism data showed. Officials attributed the arrival of 2.3 million foriegn visitors during the first 10 months of the year ...

Hundreds of people whose land has been swallowed by a giant Chinese tourism project on the coast of Koh Kong province will attempt to demonstrate their grievances today by blocking national roads 4 and 48, villagers and human rights workers said Protesters have been resisting China’s ...

A group of about 30 families in Koh Kong province’s Botum Sakor district said yesterday that they would continue to resist attempts to evict them in order to make way for a Chinese mega-tourism project, unless authorities improve their compensation offer. Villager Prum Sann said the ...

The Kingdom needs US$270 million to expand its three airports if the country is to meet its growing demand as a tourist destination, Cambodia Airport CEO Emmanuel Menanteau said yesterday. The total number of visitors passing through the Kingdom’s airports will approximately double every 10 years, ...

Foreign visitors to the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple, on the Cambodian-Thai border, rose almost 78 per cent between January and October compared with the same period last year, despite a deadly border dispute that drew international attention in February. About 2,140 foreign nationals visited the 1,000-year-old ...

Cambodia will require an additional 1,000 restaurants by 2020 to service the Kingdom’s growing tourism sector, Ministry of Tourism officials say. By 2020, seven million international visitors, and as many as 10 million domestic tourists, were expected to visit the country’s tourist destinations each year, Tith ...

Visitor arrivals to Cambodia saw a year-on-year increase of 15 percent in the first nine months of 2011, reaching more than 2 million people, according to new figures released by the Tourism Ministry yesterday. The figures showed that, from January to September, arrivals by air increased ...

Economic growth in Cambodia is being hampered by poor sanitation and hygiene, and rising food prices are leaving people struggling to afford basic produce for a balanced diet, according to a report released yesterday by the UN Development Program (UNDP). The UNDP’s 2011 Human Development Report ...

NGO Friends International launched a government-backed campaign yesterday to discourage visitors from participating in “orphanage tourism” in an effort to protect children from being exploited, organizers said yesterday Citing an unreleased report by Unicef and the Ministry of Social Affairs, James Sutherland, international communications coordinator for ...

Ruling party Senator Ly Yong Phat has kept a promise to stop his company’s dredging operations on Koh Kong province’s Tatai river, relieved business owners and residents living along the waterway said yesterday. But provincial officials confirmed that as the senator’s dredging boats moved on to ...

Cambodia hosted the 3rd World Ecotourism Conference on October 3rd at the famous costal province—Preah Sihanouk—in an aim at developing the Asia Pacific region as a leading ecotourism destination. To celebrate the acceptance of the Cambodia costal zone (Preah Sihanouk Ville, Koh Kong, Kep and Kampot) ...

Foreign direct investment in the Kingdom soared 250 per cent year-on-year through August even despite the West’s economic woes, Deputy Prime Minister Sok An said yesterday. A total of 87 projects worth US$5.6 billion were approved by the Council for the Development of Cambodia during the ...

Taking advantage of strong economic growth this year, two of the country’s largest banks have posted strong third-quarter earnings. Acleda Bank yesterday reported a net profit of $32.68 million in the first three quarters of the year, almost double the amount over the same period last ...

UNION officials fired another volley in their battle against a hotel yesterday by announcing that they would file a complaint today with a Siem Reap court, as their protests continued to draw unwanted attention to the tourist town. The Cambodian Tourism and Service Workers Federation complaint ...

A carbon credit project is in the works for the Seima biodiversity areas in Kartie and Mondulkiri provinces. During a meeting between Chan Sarun, Minister of Agricultural, Forestry and Fisheries and Colin Poole, Director of Asia Programs for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WLCS) on Sept ...

Bad weather scared tourists from Cambodian beaches and other popular travel destinations during a three-day national holiday, provincial tourism officials said yesterday. Preah Sihanouk province saw a 30 to 35 percent drop in tourist numbers during the Pchum Ben holiday, which ended Wednesday, Seng Kha, deputy ...

As the Tourism Ministry prepares to host the World Ecotourism Conference in Sihanoukville on Monday, ecotourism operators in three provinces said they were worried that the government’s development practices would undermine the very concept the conference is promoting. According to Tith Chanda, director general of the ...

Cambodian officials say the country’s economic growth rate is set to exceed seven percent this year. According to financial analysts even if the global economy slows, Cambodia is well prepared to deal with it, partly because of strong foreign investment. But the billions of dollars ...

The number of foreign visitors arriving in Cambodia jumped 14.1 percent to about 16.2 million in the first seven months of this year compared to the same period last year, according to data released Friday by the Tourism Ministry. Vietnam accounted for the largest number of ...

Gliding through the water almost soundlessly, the MS AmaLotus docked for only its second time in Phnom Penh last week At 92 meters in length and capable of holding 124 passengers, the AmaLotus is the latest cruise ship to start transporting tourists between Siem Reap and ...

A draft sub-decree sent to the Council of Ministers last week aims to strengthen the protection of the critically endangered Mekong dolphin population by designating key protection zones in the 180km stretch of Mekong River where the dolphins live. Touch Seang Tana, chairman of the Commission ...