Despite the recent opening of two large international airports and the presence of the world’s biggest temple complex, Cambodia’s linchpin holiday industry is contracting sharply, with visitor numbers half what they were last year.
Statistics published by the country’s tourism ministry show 1.54 million arrivals from abroad during the first five months of 2026, a 48% drop on the 2.95 million recorded for the January-May 2025 period.
While arrivals from Europe and the US were around the same or even up slightly from last year, the Southeast Asian kingdom saw significant reductions in numbers from China and Vietnam, at 19% and 25% respectively, and a 96% drop in visitors from Thailand, which itself recorded a 7% fall in arrivals during the first half the year.
Last year Thailand and Cambodia went to war along their disputed border, much of which was closed as a result, with around one million people temporarily forced from their homes.
Thailand also announced restrictions related to Cambodia’s alleged failure to rein in scam centres operating in the country, where multiple accounts have emerged of migrants being held against their will to work in the centres after being promised other jobs, denting the country’s reputation as a holiday destination as well as its gross domestic product, around 10% of which relies on tourism.
Cambodia’s chief attraction is the 160-hectare Angkor Wat in the country’s northwest. The temple complex, an imposing and ornate mix of Hindu and Buddhist 12th-century shrine ruins, encompass around one thousand buildings and prompted the building of a new international airport near the gateway city of Siem Reap.
Opening in late 2023, the new hub is aimed at facilitating long-haul flights and bypassing the need for travellers on larger aircraft to stop over in Bangkok or Singapore. Two years later a $2-billion new airport was opened in capital Phnom Penh, again with the aim of winning direct long-haul traffic and reducing reliance on connections from bigger cities in neighbouring countries.
