Angkor Wat revenues down 20pc in Q1

Monday, 01 June 2009
Written by Ros Dina
The Phnom Penh Post

REVENUES from Angkor Wat admission fees have shrunk by 20 percent in the first quarter, the Apsara Authority - which runs the temple complex - announced Sunday, citing the knock-on effects of Thai political turmoil.

"Most foreign tourists enter Cambodia through Thailand. So, if Thailand has a problem, we are inevitably affected by their problem," said Bun Narith, director general of the Apsara Authority.

He added that the decrease happened in line with a 22-percent drop in foreign visitors this year up to the end of March. The number of visitors to Angkor Wat continued to drop by 16 percent in April, he added.

"In 2007, more than US$32 million was earned from selling tickets to Angkor Wat, and the amount decreased about 5 percent in 2008," he said.

Sokha Hotels, which belongs to Sok Kong, the owner of Sokimex, has the right to collect ticket income for the government.

According to Bun Narith, 10 percent of the income is spent on tax and the remaining 90 percent is divided following an agreed formula: each party gets 50 percent from the first $3 million in revenues, after which 15 percent is used by the Apsara Authority for conservation and development of the temples, and the rest is divided 80-20 percent between the government and Sokha Hotels respectively.

According to the Apsara Authority, this formula has been followed since the second agreement between the government and Sokha Hotels in 2005.

Svay Sothy, a representative of Sokha Hotels, said his company reviews its contract with the government every five years, and the second contract will end in 2010.

The Apsara Authority's Department of Angkor Tourism Development showed that the number of tourists who visited Angkor Wat had decreased 13 percent in January, 26 percent in February, 26 percent in March, and 16 percent in April compared with last year's figures.

Visitors to Cambodia down

May 15, 2009
ABC Radio Australia

The number of foreign tourists visiting Cambodia dropped in the first quarter of 2009 as the global economic crisis cuts the number of people travelling.

Visitors from South Korea and Japan are down sharply.

Presenter: Robert Carmichael
Speakers: Ell Lavy, Siem Reap tuk tuk driver; Dr Thong Khon, Cambodian Minister for Tourism

Click here to listen to the English audio program (Windows Media)

CARMICHAEL: Leave the famous jungle temple - known as Ta Phrom - outside Cambodia's tourism capital of Siem Reap and - as you can hear - you are surrounded by vendors selling cold drinks, musical instruments and postcards. Cambodia has relied for a decade on the expanding tourist trade as one of its pillars for economic growth. A record 2.1 million people visited the country last year.

So the news that tourism numbers have dropped in the first quarter of 2009 from the same period last year is not good. Overall the number is down just three and a half percent to 622,000 which is better than the government had feared. But the headline figure tells only one part of the story. Tourists from richer countries such as Japan and South Korea have dropped by a third, with short-term visitors from neighbouring Vietnam making up the numbers.

And that is why tourism worker Ell Lavy - a 25-year-old driver of a motorised rickshaw around the temples of Angkor Wat - has seen his monthly earnings drop from one hundred US dollars to just seventy. Previously he would get two or three tourists a week - now he is lucky to have one.

LAVY: You know last year when I recommend them to another place they say no problem for them. But this year when I invite them to somewhere they say they that no - they have no money to pay everything. [CARMICHAEL: So you have noticed they are spending less money, and there are less tourists?] Yes, less tourists also.

CARMICHAEL: Government figures show the number of visitors from South Korea and Japan, which last year provided the largest and third-largest number of foreign visitors respectively, dropped by one-third to around 100,000 in the first quarter of this year.

Gregory Anderson is the general manager of the upmarket Le Meridien Angkor hotel in Siem Reap. He has noticed there are fewer Japanese tourists in town, and says occupancy rates are down 20 percent for Siem Reap's upmarket hotels. He blames the global economic situation, as well as political volatility in Thailand and an ongoing border dispute between Cambodia and Thailand.

So in the face of lower spending on travel and tourism in the current global downturn, what can Cambodia do to boost visitor numbers? Tourism Minister Dr Thong Khon says he is targeting countries that are less affected by the global slump. And he is optimistic that 2009 could yet prove better than last year. But he says Cambodia is not helped by problems in Thailand.

KHON: Because you know Thailand is a main gate to Cambodia. Thirty three percent of total arrivals to Cambodia come from Thailand by air, by water, by land. When Thailand is affected, so it affects Cambodia too.

CARMICHAEL: To minimize that problem, the ministry is trying to boost short-haul flights from within the ten-member ASEAN nation and China, Japan and South Korea. Cambodia has already scrapped visa requirements for nationals within a number of ASEAN states. And he says the private sector must work to make the country more attractive - including using discounts for hotels and restaurants.

But making Cambodia more attractive isn't helped by the trickle of reported crimes against foreign tourists, some of them serious. The most high-profile was that a friend of Britain's Princess Eugenie had her handbag stolen in Phnom Penh recently. What does he think of the incident?

KHON: In Cambodia the whole country is completely safe and secure. But the thing that happened is not everywhere. Sometimes like this or like that. But the case of the princess - we checked with the police, we checked everywhere - they have no information. If the case really happened, why did they not report it to the police?

CARMICHAEL: Dr Thong Khon says the global crisis has seen Cambodia downgrade its estimate of tourist arrivals for 2015 by around one-fifth to 4 million visitors. So what message will he take to the region to try and boost visitor numbers?

KHON: Many tourists come to stay in home-stay, in the countryside, on some islands, for one month, for two weeks with the family. From Scandinavia, from Australia. They come from everywhere. No problem. Come. Come to stay in Cambodia.

Cambodian tourism sector, slowed down by the crisis, turns to its neighbours

Kep (Cambodia). 11/01/2008: Back to empty beaches? (Photo: John Vink/ Magnum)

23-03-2009
By Ros Dina
Ka-set

The tourism sector has been the spearhead of Cambodia’s economic growth over the past decade, but will it be spared by the economic crisis which affects the Kingdom? The Cambodian Ministry of Tourism and representatives of the tourism industry show their optimism and claim they only fear, at worst, a slowdown in the frenzied growth which the sector went through since the end of the 1990s. Minister of Tourism Thong Khon recently told Ka-set that the number of tourists in January 2009 had “only” gone down by 2% compared to this time last year when 223,581 tourists, out of an annual total of 2.1 million, entered the Cambodian territory. Generally speaking for the year 2009, the Minister plans a growth rate situated between 0 and 2%, quoting predictions made by the World Tourism Organisation (WTO). However, small enterprises and those living on little jobs in that sector do not agree with the figures.

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Cambodian Tourism Outlook

Monday, 15 December 2008
eTravelBlackboardAsia.com

According to some Cambodian media resources, tourism authorities hope to double the number of Chinese visits within the next two years.

CAMBODIA is hoping to lure more Chinese visitors in the wake of crippling anti-government protests in Thailand and falling arrivals from Western countries hit by the global financial crisis, tourism officials told the Phnom Penh Post Monday.

Tourism Minister Dr. Thong Khon said that China is a growing tourism market and that officials plan to double the number of Chinese visitors by the end of 2009.

China is the fifth-largest market after Korea, Viet Nam, Japan and the United States, with 10,776 visiting Cambodia in the first 10 months of 2008, according to Tourism Ministry figures.

An April 2008 report by the Tourism Ministry said that 6.4 percent of the total number of tourists to Cambodia in the first four months of the year were Chinese.

In 2007, Cambodia received a 94,374 Chinese tourists out of a total of 2,015,128 visitors, according to the Tourism Ministry.

"We plan to attract a large number of Chinese tourists to Cambodia in 2009, and step -by-step we will double the number to keep the tourism industry strong," Dr. Thong Khon said.

"We expect that a lot of Chinese tourists will visit Cambodia soon, if there are more flights than before ... and plan to advertise to attract Chinese tourists through CCTV1 television," he added.
"Through this plan, we expect that big Chinese airline companies will increase their activity, too."

There are currently four air routes between Cambodia and China, namely from Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Guangzhou, Dr. Thong Khon said.

Ho Vandy, chairman of the Cambodian Association of Travel Agents (CATA), said the Tourism Ministry's plan might help attract more Chinese tourists.

He added however, that he does not expect the numbers to increase dramatically until 2010.

"I think the Tourism Ministry's plan to attract Chinese tourists to Cambodia is a golden opportunity, because China is warning their people not to visit Thailand, which is under turmoil," Ho Vandy said.

According to an evaluation by the World Tourism Organisation (WTO) up to 2020, China will get 100 million international visitors, while the country will also provide 100 million visitors to countries in the region.

Lao Heng, Chairman of VLK Tour Company, said that an increase in Chinese tourism would help offset declining visitors from the US and Europe.

"I think we should not depend on only European tourists," he told the Phnom Penh Post.

"We had better look at regional tourists, because our people need food to eat."

Thailand's crisis could cost Cambodia $100m: minister

Anti-government protesters stand guard while blocking the entrance at Don Mueang Airport in Bangkok. (Photo: AFP)

Monday, 01 December 2008
Written by Kay Kimsong
The Phnom Penh Post

The occupation of Bangkok's airports has closed Cambodia’s main tourist transit point, putting the choke on foreign travel

CAMBODIA stands to lose more than US$100 million in tourism-related revenue if the political deadlock gripping Thailand's capital - a major transit point for visitors to the Kingdom - does not ease in the next three months, Minister of Tourism Thong Khon told the Post Sunday.

The minister estimated that 1,500 tourists arrive daily by air and land from Bangkok, accounting for nearly 30 percent of total travellers, and that foreign visitors spend $770 on average per trip.

He added that the government expects the turmoil in Bangkok could last for at least a few months.

"At least 10 to 12 flights arrive every day in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh via Bangkok," Thong Khon said. "We are sure to lose substantial numbers of tourists."

The anti-government People's Alliance for Democracy last week stormed Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang airports in an attempt to bring down the government of Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat.

Thai government officials have since declared a state of emergency at both airports, which have cancelled all flights.

Tourism drops

Despite an increase in arrivals from other countries, the number of overall visitors has dropped, Thong Khon said.

"There are many passengers travelling via Hanoi, Japan and Korea, but not as many as we had coming from Bangkok," he said.

"Cambodia wants Thailand to return to normal. If [the situation in] Bangkok continues to deteriorate, it will impact our tourism sector," he said.

Thong Khon urged tourism operators to continue marketing Cambodia as a safe travel destination.

Tes Chhaya, a tour guide in Siem Reap, said the crisis in Bangkok has taken a toll on local businesses, including hotels, tourism packages and taxis.

"At this time last year, I would have bookings for nearly 15 days out of every month. Now, we are getting only about five days of bookings per month," he said, adding that his profits have dropped more than 50 percent.

Independent economist Sok Sina said the political turmoil, as well as the global financial crisis, has affected Cambodia's tourism sector this year, making it unlikely to achieve the growth projected by the government.

"Cambodia will not likely reach its target of two million visitors this year," he said, adding that a drop in visitors to Siem Reap would also hurt local farmers who supply produce and meat to area hotels.

Analysts expect the crisis in Bangkok to drag on with the army and police refusing to act on government demands to disband the demonstrators.

Meanwhile, pro-government groups have threatened to directly confront the People's Alliance in what observers fear would be an eruption of bloodshed that could spark a coup.