Cambodia tourism moves into mainstream

Interesting piece of news from Phnom Penh Post. Cambodia's tourism is definitely on way up and way to go for many travelers ready to explore something different....

Tuk-tuks take tourists on a tour of the Angkor temples complex in Siem Reap province. More than half of all visitors to Cambodia visit Angkor during their stay.

Helicopters buzz over Sihanoukville and the nearby islands off the southern coast, carrying development prospectors hungry for a slice of the pie. Meanwhile, construction by private developers is underway to convert the abandoned French colonial Bokor hill station into a $1 billion luxury resort.

Less than a decade and a half ago, local headlines about tourists may have mentioned the three Western backpackers kidnapped and eventually executed by the Khmer Rouge.
“Ten years ago on the forefront of visitors’ minds was Khmer Rouge, civil war, landmines. Now it’s Angkor Wat and beaches,” says Gordon Sharpless, who runs the Tales of Asia travel website and owns a guesthouse in Siem Reap.

“Back then, even in Phnom Penh you always had to ask a guesthouse if their electricity and water were working,” he says.
Travel writers and guesthouse owners acknowledge that some thrill-seekers still visit Cambodia in search of a wild-west atmosphere, but they say that breed is fading as mainstream tourists flood in.

A record more than two million tourists arrived in Cambodia in 2007, up 20 percent from 2006. Meanwhile industry earnings grew more than a third to $1.4 billion and are expected to hit $2.2 billion by 2010.

The Ministry of Tourism (MoT) estimates annual international visitor arrivals will reach 2.4 million in 2008. After that, the projections are for 2.9 million in 2009 and 3.35 million in 2010.

In the past six years the volume of Cambodians traveling domestically has more than tripled.

The total number of international visitors was only one million in 2004 – a figure the MoT expects to be nearly doubled by tourism to Siem Reap alone by 2010.

Hotel and guesthouse numbers in Cambodia more than tripled in the past ten years, contributing to the sector’s employment numbers – 280,000 last year and expected to rise almost 100,000 more by the decade’s end.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/20080307190/-Special-Supplements/Tourism-moves-into-mainstream.html