Cambodia has established the China Ready Centre (CRC) to cater to roughly 2 million Chinese tourists expected to visit the country per year by 2020, as well as to improve the skills of local tourist operators working with Chinese clients.
Cambodian Tourism Minister Thong Khon, while making this announcement at the inaugural National Tourism Workshop on Sunday, said: “The China Ready Centre was set up recently due to the rapid yearly growth of Chinese tourist arrivals in the country,” the Khmer Times online reported on Thursday.
“This centre will facilitate research on the requirements and demands of Chinese tourists as well as strengthen the Chinese language and cultural skills of Cambodian tourist operators,” Khon said.
“The Tourism Ministry will cooperate fully with the CRC to ensure its success and also help it get accredited with a similar centre in Australia,” added the minister.
Early this year, the ministry released a white paper titled “China Ready for Cambodia Tourism” outlining a five-year strategy for attracting Chinese tourists to the country with the aim of getting 2 million of them to visit the country per year by 2020.
In the first four months of this year, Cambodia recorded about 275,000 Chinese tourist arrivals, up by 13.6% compared to the same period last year. Last year, 694,712 tourists from China visited the country and this was a 14.5% increase from 2014.
But compared to neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam, the number of tourist arrivals from China are still low. In 2014, Thailand recorded 7.9 million Chinese tourist arrivals while Vietnam recorded 1.6 million.
Ho Vandy, secretary general of Cambodia’s National Tourism Alliance, told the Khmer Times that the centre was crucial for attracting large numbers of Chinese tourists to the country.
“The Chinese inbound tourism market is progressing and we should not lose sight of it,” Vandy stressed.
However, Vandy added a word of caution. “We also need to acknowledge that not all the 1,000 or so tourist agents and companies in the country focus solely on the China market. They also have to work with tourists from other parts of the world in order to diversify their businesses,” he pointed out.
Instead, Vandy said, the ministry should also ensure that the centre receives full cooperation from the private sector instead of just making it a government-supported tourism research centre.