Cambodia wants to increase the number of Kuwaiti tourists visiting the country by forging closer ties between the two nations’ tourism agencies and by possibly launching direct flight connections between Kuwait City and Phnom Penh.
The matter was dicussed at a meeting of Kuwait’s ambassador in Cambodia, Dheara Naser Al-Tuwaijri, with the Cambodian Minister of Tourism, Thong Khon, on May 30.
The minister suggested that the Kuwaiti ambassador should push for direct flights between Cambodia and Kuwait, and invited Kuwaitis to invest into Cambodia’s soaring tourism sector.
“We need more and more investment in the tourism sector,” the minsiter said according to a report by Kuwaiti News Agency KUNA. Though the country has been experiencing rising numbers of inbound tourists, it still lacks touristic infrastructure and accommodation at the touristic hot spots especially along the western coast.
“More opportunity will come, so we need more investment for this sector,” the minister added.
The number of overseas visitors to Cambodia increased by 14 per cent to 2.88 million in 2011, according to numbers released by the tourism ministry.
Of those, only 8,905 came from the Middle East, most of them from Israel. Irani nationals were the second highest visitor group from the Middle East with 696 persons, followed by Kuwaitis with 530.
