Foreign tourists to Cambodia's Angkor down 98.8 pct in July due to pandemic

[geovalin]

PHNOM PENH, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia's famed Angkor Archeological Park received only 1,790 foreign tourists in July 2020, down 98.8 percent compared to the same month last year, the state-owned Angkor Enterprise said in a statement on Saturday.

 

The ancient site earned 78,440 U.S. dollars from ticket sales in July this year, also down 98.8 percent compared to the same month last year, the statement said.

 

It added that during the first seven months of this year, the park attracted a total of 389,630 foreign visitors earning nearly 18.2 million U.S. dollars from ticket sales, down 72 percent and 70.8 percent respectively compared to the same period last year.

 

Located in northwestern Siem Reap province, the Angkor Archeological Park, inscribed on the World Heritage List of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1992, is the kingdom's most popular tourist destination.

 

The huge slump in the number of foreign tourists to the park was due to the COVID-19 pandemic that had forced the country to impose entry restrictions on all foreign travelers since March to curb the virus spread.

The Southeast Asian nation has so far recorded a total of 239 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 166 patients cured and 73 remained in hospital.

 

read more http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-08/01/c_139257278.htm

[JensenZ]

It's incredible that they are making reports like this one to fill up their media space. It's only news to anyone who happened to be living under a rock all year.

 

With the incredibly tough requirements for foreigners arriving in Cambodia (big USD deposit) it's amazing that even one tourist went there. That 1790 tourists visited in July is quite surprising to this reader. Where did these 1790 tourists come from?

 

Note to the reporter who wrote this: We know, Covid-19 has closed all tourist businesses on planet earth. We don't need to hear about each one individually. It's not news.

 

In more interesting news, it seems that many Cambodians are happy about the absence of tourists at these ancient temples:

 

“But from a Cambodian perspective, it’s like they’ve reclaimed the temples. It’s Cambodian ancestry, it’s Cambodian heritage, it’s on the flag, Angkor is the spiritual symbol of a nation, and they’ve really taken that to heart again.”

 

https://www.voanews.com/south-central-asia/cambodians-revel-now-tourist-free-angkor-wat

 

And this article makes it clear that the ONLY visitors to Angkor are tourists who were already in Cambodia.