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Address at the Closing of the 2008 Tourism Stocktaking Conference in the 1st Semester of 2009, and Direction Setting for the 2nd Semester of 2009
and 2010
Chaktomuk Conference
Hall, July 30, 2009
- Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
- Dear
all participants!
Today it is my great honor and pleasure to be here in the closing
of the 2008 Tourism Stocktaking Conference in the 1st Semester of 2009, and Direction Setting for the 2nd Semester of 2009
and 2010.
Taking this opportunity, on behalf of the Royal Government of
Cambodia, I would like to congratulate the Ministry of Tourism on its remarkable
achievements, especially in spite of the impact of the global financial crisis,
political instability in some neighboring countries, and the outbreak of swine
flue H1N1 on Cambodia’s tourism sector. All tourism achievements reflect
the successful implementation of the Royal Government’s Rectangular Strategy
– Phase II.
Tourism has been a growth pillar for Cambodia for years. Due to
the global financial crisis, our tourism sector stagnated during late 2008 and
in the first half of 2009. However, the Royal Government is determined to boost
this sector in the short term, medium term and long term by ensuring peace,
political stability, social order, tourists’ safety, further construction of
physical infrastructure, improvement of legal framework and institutional
capacity, human resource development and diversification of tourism market and
so forth. To strengthen tourism sector in the wake of the global financial
crisis, I have recently instructed the Steering Committee for Private Sector
Development to exchange dialogues with the private sector and relevant
development partners to monitor Cambodia’s tourism situation and propose
practical recommendations to address the current challenges.
I have also appealed to the private sector to create more
attractive tour packages with reduced accommodation costs and free packages of
extra services. In this spirit, in addition to the Royal Government’s effort to
create an environment conducive to the growth in tourism sector, we expect the
private sector to do its utmost to improve its own competing ability, and
efficiency and quality of its tour services. I have also appealed to those
employed in the tourism sector to work together to improve the quality of tour
services, a pre-requisite not only for the growth of tourism sector but also to
mitigate the impact of global financial crisis in the short term.
I am pleased with and appreciative with the performance of the
Ministry of Tourism, relevant institutions and the private sector that have
collaborated closely to take measures to mitigate the impact of the global
financial crisis on Cambodia’s tourism sector. In spite of limited success, this
indicates our committed responsibility and joint determination. I strongly
support the publishing of the stocktaking report, discussion and contribution
from all participants for addressing the challenges during this difficult period
to realize the Royal Government’s strategic objectives.
Taking this opportunity, I would like to raise some
recommendations for the implementation of tourism sector development strategy as
follows:
1. Promotion and Market: The Ministry
of Tourism and the private sector must cooperate closely to promote tourism
industry both domestically and internationally through all means, especially
those markets in ASEAN, ASEAN plus 3, plus India and some emerging markets such
as Russia and the Middle East while maintaining our existing markets. We also
have to organize more tourism events as well as cultural and sport events to
attract more tourists.
Adding to the reduced service charge in order to provide discount
tour packages and international promotion, we need to ensure the comprehensive
and far-reaching tourism promotion by encouraging domestic tourist movement and
linking this to the campaign of “Cambodia – Kingdom of Wonder” and “Clean
City, Clean Resort and Good Services” movement.
At the same
time, we must make advertisement through the homepage of the Ministry of
Tourism, Cambodian embassies, consulate general and consulate centers in foreign
countries by linking it to all homepages of other state and private
ministries/institutions and civil societies in conformity to the concept of “All for tourism and tourism for all”. Furthermore, the Ministry of Tourism
must immediately establish and put into operation tourism information centers in
Phnom Penh, Siem Reap city, Sihaknouk Province and at other key tourism sites
such as the historic cultural sites, the South-west eco-tourism and the
North-east eco-tourism sites and those areas surrounding the Tonle Sap lake.
Moreover, the Ministry of Tourism must cooperate with the Ministry of Culture
and Fine Art, institution concerned and the private sector to organize events,
especially to advertise about Khmer civilization and culture during various
occasions and functions at resorts, hotels and restaurants.
I would like our
embassies in foreign countries, especially in key international markets, to make
more efforts to promote tourism advertising activities. The Ministry of Tourism
and the Ministry of Foreign Affair and International Cooperation must
effectively work together.
2. Visa
Issue: So far we have exempted visa for 5 ASEAN member
countries from which about 400,000 tourists came in 2008, which is equivalent to
around USD 8millions of loss revenue if visa fees are to be applied. However,
the Royal Government understands clearly about the benefit of visa’s revenues
and those revenues derived from tourists’ expenditure in the country, which
generate numerous numbers of employment for the citizen.
The government
will continuously consider promoting visa exemption with the first country in
ASEAN market. I agreed with the initiative that we should issues visa free of
charge for a limited period during crisis time. At the same time, I would like
to encourage the implementation of Single Visa policy with other countries in
ASEAN too, because it was my former initiative. While the implementation of
single visa with Thailand is rather slow, I think applying this policy with
Singapore or Vietnam is appropriate by just adopting the sample agreement with
Thailand to discuss about the convenience and speed, because this is the key to
facilitate the travelling of tourists from 3rd country coming to our
region without asking for different visas for different country destinations. In
this connection, the Ministry of Tourism must cooperate with the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation to achieve this task.
I would like the
Ministry of Tourism to work with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
International Cooperation to review and further publicize policy of visa
on arrival widely, because a majority of tourists do not seem to be
aware of this policy despite advertisement efforts for many years.
On the other
hand, the inter-ministerial committee mechanism for facilitating the travel and
transportation of tourists and passengers at Poipet international
border gate and at other international border gates, the Ministry of Tourism
must, through the inter-ministerial mechanism, work with relevant
ministries/institutions to expedite development of hospitality infrastructure at Dong Krolor and Poipet international border gates
and the construction of international tourism port at Kep.
3.
Transportation: I would like to compliment the effort
to work with the Philippine embassy to enable direct flight from Philippine to
Cambodia (because between Philippine and Cambodia is visa-free) and we must make
more effort to promote direct flights from Indonesia and Japan as well. The
State Secretariat for Civil Aviation must undertake this task and provide all
kinds of facilitation to all requests from airliners, and must bear in mind that
travelling and transportation are the challenges and key issues for the
development in the tourism sector.
With respect to
easing travel and transportation, I would like to command that: we must jointly
eradicate all kinds of misconducts by bad people or bad officials who always
disturb and cause difficulties to tourists. The Inter-ministerial Committee,
with the Minister of Tourism as the chair and the General Commissioner of
National Police as the Permanent Vice-Chairman has enough right to undertake
this task efficiently. Furthermore, we have the tourism law which clearly state
about the penalty, hence the committee must keep implementing this task
effectively.
4.
Strengthening development and improving the supporting environment at key
tourist destinations: Siem Reap is an important
tourism destination with the largest number of visiting tourist in the Kingdom
of Cambodia. In this sense, we should not only rely on our tourism sector
development plan but we must continue to implement this plan quickly and
comprehensively while other countries in the world are in fierce competition for
attracting tourists after the incidences of the global economic crisis and
pandemic which are still casting the impact on their countries. The important
points that we have to strengthen and jointly expand tourism development in Siem
Reap – Angkor, include ensuring the increase in traffic order and safety, road
expansion, facilitation of the waterway travelling, sewage system preparation
and waste management and environmental protection, improvement of sanitation
along the streets and at public spaces. Along with that, the promotion of
Cambodia’s tourism sector to the world must show about the good environment of
Cambodia, especially at famous tourism sites such as Siem Reap, Phnom Penh
Capital City and Sihanouk Province.
I would like the
Ministry of Tourism to cooperate with related institutions to smoothly pay more
attention to this work.
5.
Sustainable Development: The main objective of the law
has clearly shown the need for sustainable development in tourism sector with
quality and efficiency, in which it has clearly illustrated the process for
preparing tourism development plan at the national and regional level, which are
required to be approved by the Royal Government, and the sub-national tourism
development plan by the sub-national administrative authority, but has to be
consistent with the regional tourism development plan. Therefore, from now on,
tourism development plan at all levels have to be firmly cooperated among
related ministries/institutions and the sub-national level of authority to
ensure sustainable development of the tourism sector. At the same time, we must
clearly understand about those violation which may spoil or impact on the
natural cultural environment such as maintaining the beach, island, various
ecotourism sites, which are the most attractive natural resorts.
I would like to
support and encourage the research which recognizes a number of tourism resorts
as the responsible tourism development areas with high care and responsibility
in order to make sure that the national and international tourists can directly
visit the nature because this is also the tendency of the current society as
well. But, this work has to be seriously balanced about the conservation and
development by not allowing the conservation get in the way of development and
using the development to destroy conservation, yet they have to be done with
high conscience and consideration for our benefit and that of our future
generations.
Taking this
opportunity, I would like to appeal investment companies, which have already
been principally approved by the Royal Government, to prepare the master plan as
soon as possible and rightly put it into implementation. The Ministry of Tourism
have to cooperate with other related sectors and the Council for the Development
of Cambodia (CDC) in order to help observe and monitor the implementation of the
investment projects for the sake of promoting plan to attract tourists. I would
also like to appreciate the provincial/municipal development management
committees, who have put greatest efforts in the development of tourist
attraction objectives and resorts within their framework, especially pay
attention to the community based tourism, the creation of local tourism
community, the promotion of various mechanisms to reduce poverty of the people.
In fact, we have
been proud that currently our people become better aware of the organic
agricultural products and craftsmanship products, which are full of creativity
and good packaging in order to replace the imported products. These can be
considered as local exporting or the replacement of imports, which allow us to
save considerable amount of foreign currencies as well as contributing to the
reduction of the economic downturn in tourism sector.
I have also
observed with attention to the awareness campaign of Cambodia: Kingdom of
Wonder and the “Clean City, Clean Resort and Good Services” movement. I have thought that we have done a lot of good things, but we have to
try further to make sure this work can be more successful and to transform
Cambodia into the most attractive destination for visitors in the region.
Now, we have an
Inter-ministerial Committee to lead and push the awareness campaign of Cambodia: Kingdom of Wonder and the “Clean City, Clean Resort and Good
Services” movement, and I agree to work as an honorary president due to the
understanding that this work is significant. I would like the secretariat of
this committee to convene a regular review meeting by awarding annual
appreciation.
I hope that
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, related private and public sectors, will try
your utmost to cooperate with one another to develop Cambodia’s tourism sector
with quality, sustainability, efficiency and especially, working together to
make sure that tourism sector in Cambodia can be sustained in the face of this
crisis stage and pave the way for Cambodia to become the destination for
cultural and natural tourism with attractiveness in the region and the world.
At the end, I
would like to wish Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen the four gems of Buddhist
blessings: Longevity, Nobility, Health and Strength.
May I announce
the Closing of 2008 Tourism Stocktaking Conference in the 1st Semester of 2009 and Direction Setting for the 2nd Semester of 2009
and 2010 hereinafter!
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