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We are less than four weeks of the tourist high season in Southeast Asia and Cambodia is optimist to continue its growing boom as an international destiny. The government expects an increase of 15 % in foreign visitors – about 3 million persons entering to the Kingdom of Wonder as it is called in the official tourist promotion. It is already gone the time when Cambodia was avoid as a black stain in the Indochina peninsula, with tourists passing in their planes from Bangkok to Saigon wondering how Cambodia would look like.
A group of Japanese tourists see Angkor Wat in early August 2012.
The tourist development has been also a progressive process. In the beginning foreign visitors came only to the Siem Reap Province, mostly in flights from Bangkok, seeing the temples, while staying in what was then a silent Siem Reap town without nightlife. Phnom Penh was the second stage of that growing as much as the city developed its infrastructure and, although its chaotic traffic – that becomes rather a fun for many -, the city of the four faces, as it was called in the past, has more attractions than what it is imaginable.
Then Cambodia became in the spam of few years a country for either backpackers or more exclusive visitors. Some of its small main towns began to resemble authentic cities: Battambang, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville, casinos were built at its borders as guardians, becoming a direct form of foreign investment and job generators. The natural other time unexplored Cambodian beaches and islands got the attention of national and foreign investors to create from luxury resorts to nightlife streets.
In the middle of those too unexpected attractions discovered by the free walking of foreigners through the country, the best part of Cambodia is its people. Many foreigners started to settle in the country, not those of NGOs or workers of international agencies, but the most diverse kind of persons from the five continents, especially living in the main Cambodian urban areas. One wonders why an European wanted to set in a country like Cambodia and many would answer that they fall in love with the country, that is at the end its people, their culture, their way of being and seeing things with a calm and simple way of enjoying life.
Every year, between November and April, the number of visitors seems to increase and it becomes the spring time of hotels, restaurants, tuk-tuks, casinos, archaeological sites, tourist agencies and business in general. During the tourist high season (THS) 2011-2012 the Ministry of Tourism reported the entrance of 2.88 million foreigners, first to Siem Reap Province and second to the Cambodian capital. It produced earnings for 1.9 billion US dollars, meaning the 12 % of the GDP.
Just to compare how tourism became one of the leading sectors of the Cambodian economy, 118,183 persons arrived to Cambodia in 1993 - it was the year when a new Cambodian constitution was being written and we had an stagnant economy. The number of entrance doubled in 1995 with 219,680 and it is easy to guess that most of them were humanitarian volunteers and workers. In 2000 we see the second big increase with 466,365 and we are already at the start of an economic rehabilitation: 2004 with 1,055,202, then 2007 with 2,015,128 and last year with 2,881,862, so we expect more than 3 million this time.
During the first semester of 2012, the Ministry of Tourism reported that most visitors to Cambodia arrived by land and water ways in 51.6% (905,773 persons) and it is thanks to the improvement of land transport connections with Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. The second way was by plane to the Phnom Penh and Siem Reap international airports (850,879 persons, 48.4 %).
Although many Cambodians prepare for European visitors, in reality it is Vietnam the first provider of tourists for the Kingdom with a share of 21.5 % during the first semester of this year. The second tourist provider was South Korea (12.9%), China (8.6 %), Laos (5.9%) and Thailand (5.2%), which fluctuates according to the political tensions between both countries. In conclusion, Asians are the first tourists and US citizens made the 6th group of visitors during the first six months of the year (5.2 %), followed by another Asian, Japan (4.9%), France (3.4%), Australia (3.3%) and U.K. (3.3%).
It stimulates the economy, of course, creating hundreds of job positions for the growing young Cambodian population. It includes the development of infrastructures and a more universal mentality as soon as Cambodians meet with people from very far cultures. But we see the constructions of hotels, resorts and everything prepare to foreign visitors, while a lack of many other conditions for this people that is rated as so cute by foreigners: Still much to do in education – there is a very reduced number of public universities and most of them centered in the capital. Public health attention continues to be poor in a general view and poverty stays out of the look of tourists passing through the wonderful tourism path.
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