Tourism In Cambodia Research Articles

Language and tourism in Cambodia: a multi-case study of the linguistic landscape in Phnom Penh hotels

ABSTRACT Cambodia’s multilingual and multicultural ecology has in recent decades been largely influenced by globalisation and tourism. International businesses within the tourism industry, such as hotels, often impact the multilingual ecology of societies when they bring with them their linguistic practices and attitudes. This article thus presents the findings from a multi-case study of the linguistic landscape in four hotels in Phnom Penh, which seeks to investigate how language policy and language attitudes influence language use in hotels. A small sample of public signs in four different four-star and five-star hotels was qualitatively analysed and the findings used to complement existing literature on spoken language in hotels. The findings reveal the dominance of English, as well as the visibility of Chinese and Khmer in the linguistic landscape, and the factors contributing to each language’s level of prominence are discussed.

Dynamic relationship between air transport, economic growth and inbound tourism in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam

Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (the CLMV countries) in Mainland Southeast Asia share a similar history in their political systems, development of their aviation industries and their economic development in general. This study examines the relationship between air transport development, economic growth and inbound tourism in the CLMV countries. There is bi-directional causality between air passenger traffic and economic growth in the long run. Inbound tourism has a significant impact on air transport demand in the long run but no significant relationship exists between the two in the short run. Air transport deregulation had a positive and significant impact on traffic volumes, particularly for Cambodia. Further reforms are still needed before such an outcome can occur in Myanmar.

Lessons from COVID-19's impact on medical tourism in Cambodia

Making medical tourism a more valuable healthcare system is a significant public health issue. However, little discussion has been conducted on what lessons can be learned from the impact of COVID-19 on medical tourism. This study aimed to discuss the issues and barriers faced by patients unable to seek medical tourism, and the medical care experience at private general hospital in capital, Cambodia. First, when patients seeking medical tourism were unable to go abroad due to the pandemic or other reasons, some of them could not easily visit domestic health care facilities. Second, even if patients received medical care in the home country's hospitals due to the interruption of medical tourism, sharing the patient's medical information between domestic and overseas medical institutions was difficult. The third problem in medical tourism is that dependence on overseas medical resources might hinder the development of medical professionals, facilities, and other environments in the country of origin. This experience revealed the need to encourage patients who were unable to undertake medical tourism to visit domestic medical facilities, make efforts to share patient information across countries, and to invest in developing each department in domestic hospitals. Support for patients who are unable to undertake medical tourism is urgently needed.

Sustainable Community-Based Tourism in Cambodia and Tourists’ Willingness to Pay

Community-Based Tourism (CBT) sites are often seen as a tool for poverty alleviation and eradication, especially in Least Developed Countries like Cambodia. CBT as a development tool has been critically examined in recent years in a development cooperation context, but also in academic literature. Two of the major discussion points are the approaches used both to establish, and ensure the financial sustainability CBT sites. This paper seeks to contribute to these discussions by examining the viability of the classical top-down CBT model in comparison to the bottom up approach to promote sustainable tourism development in Cambodia in consideration of the Sustainable Development Goals. The often-missing financial sustainability frequently happens due to a lack of management skills and a lack of knowledge of pricing in the communities. Based on this notion, this paper also contributes to the discussion by examining the willingness to pay of different target groups (i.e., locals, expatriates, and international tourists), and presents two argu- ments in support of a stronger emphasis of the local and, especially, the expatriate mar- ket. Firstly, expatriates display significantly higher willingness to pay than international tourists, and, secondly, expatriate support allows CBT sites to build an understanding of potential customers’ needs, thereby supporting a more organic and sustainable growth.

Social entrepreneurship and tourism in Cambodia: advancing community engagement

Tourism scholars agree that social entrepreneurship has an important role to play in the adoption of financially sustainable strategies to achieve social aims and the responsible development of tourism. Yet little is known about how tourism-based social enterprises (TSEs) engage with local communities. This article aims to fill this void by addressing the question of what approaches to community engagement in tourism development are being encouraged by social entrepreneurship. The study focuses on TSE-led tourism initiatives in Cambodia where tourism is a key revenue sector. Based on case-study methodology, this article develops a typology of three distinct manifestations of TSEs showing varying levels of community engagement: (1) the cash cow, (2) community empowerment and (3) inclusive business model. The findings demonstrate that across the three models, TSEs contribute to new ways of ensuring that the poorest segments of society receive a greater share of benefits. This typology also captures the diversification of community engagement away from the established role of NGOs to a variety of independent social enterprises. However, due to fluctuations in tourist arrivals and lack of structural support for TSEs, it remains to be seen whether this transformation will advance the sustainable development of Cambodian communities.

Whose Voices are Heard? Victimhood and Dark Tourism in Cambodia.

Whose Voices are Heard? Victimhood and Dark Tourism in Cambodia.

English Ability Assessment for Economic Analysis of Employment and Income in Cambodian Frontline Staff

Tourism in Cambodia has grown remarkably since the early 2000’s; the influx of international travelers meant that tourist industry (TI) frontline employees have needed top-level English communication ability. Since background data in Cambodia has been lacking, the author wanted to verify the role of English communication ability (ECA) in TI employees in Siem Reap city to fill this gap. During four surveys over five years, the author collected background as well as ECA data. To more accurately measure ECA numerically as a means for other researchers to conduct further studies, the author designed an assessment test loosely based on the CEFR. In statistical analysis of income with English variables, high positive correlations were found in English communication ability, years and hours of English education, and monthly expenditure for English learning. Therefore, it can be said that there is a significant relationship between ECA, better employment, and higher incomes in TI employees there. This scale could be profitably used via the Internet to conduct similar research in similar situations.

Childhood studies and orphanage tourism in Cambodia

Interacting with children is one of the most popular activities among volunteer tourists, yet volunteer tourism research rarely is informed by insights from childhood studies. This paper shows how a greater understanding of the socially constructed nature of many assumptions about children and childhood, as well as a more accurate understanding of child development processes, can deepen understanding of the phenomenon widely referred to as orphanage tourism. Issues to be addressed include the definition and delineation of orphanage tourism, motivations for and consequences of orphanage tourism, and the anti-orphanage tourism campaign. Main points will be illustrated with excerpts from a content analysis of volunteers’ testimonials, blogs and other online sources.

Sustainable tourism and its use as a development strategy in Cambodia: a systematic literature review

Governments in many developing countries endorse sustainable tourism, despite associated practical limitations and challenges as a development strategy. Using the case of Cambodia, this paper illustrates how sustainable tourism issues in a developing country may be better understood through a systematic review of scattered relevant peer-reviewed and grey literature. This can help in identifying emergent themes and challenges, gaps in knowledge, and opportunities for future research. Analysis of 77 documents on Cambodia's sustainable tourism revealed themes and challenges relating to: (1) an emphasis on nature-based tourism (ecotourism); (2) calls for greater community engagement for sustainable outcomes; (3) stakeholder perceptions and values as drivers of tourism success; (4) cultural heritage as a key tourism attraction; and (5) foreign investment shaping Cambodia's tourism future. Unequal emphasis is given to key government policies for tourism development and there is limited practical guidance on how to realise a vision of sustainable tourism. There is a lack of consideration of how the socio-economic and cultural context affects sustainable tourism. The evidence suggests that sustainable tourism in Cambodia is questionable until fundamental economic, social capacity and policy issues are addressed, along with greater emphasis given to the tourism system's demand side.

The political economy of orphanage tourism in Cambodia

A recent Aljazeera report on ‘Cambodia’s Orphan Business’ explains ‘how “voluntourism” could be fuelling the exploitation of Cambodian children’. Anti-orphanage tourism movements have emerged to resist the growth of Cambodia’s contested orphanage tourism industry, which is blamed for widespread corruption and the exploitation of children for profit. Taking a Polanyian political economy approach, this article illustrates how the emergence of and response to the orphanage tourism industry represent, in Karl Polanyi’s words, a ‘double movement’ between the neoliberalization of orphanages and the corollary protective countermovement by anti-orphanage tourism campaigns that challenge the industry’s morality and legitimacy. It argues that while resistance to the commodification of orphanages under the newly neoliberalized Cambodian economy reflects Polanyi’s double movement thesis, the limits of this resistance are also indicative of how countermovements are challenged by the broader political economy in which they operate.

Hope in the dark: geographies of volunteer and dark tourism in Cambodia

Increasing theoretical attention has recently been given to the importance of material experience to the emergence of hope. Drawing on geographies of hope and the monstrous, I explore the convergence of the hope for a better world with sites of past violence within volunteer tourism placements in Cambodia. Volunteer tourism, for which Cambodia is a popular destination, allows people to volunteer for short periods of time with development or conservation organizations. Volunteer tourists on medical and community development placements attest to a hopeful belief in contributing to the eradication of poverty through improving education and medical care. However, their hope for a better future is rarely considered in the context of the monstrous sites of remembered violence and deprivation that mark the history of the impoverished places where they volunteer. Using interviews with returned volunteer tourists and auto-ethnographic reflections on participant observation in Cambodia, I consider volunteers’ visits to memorials for Khmer Rouge atrocities and communities of poverty as sites in which to observe the becoming of hope in a better future. This article gestures towards the capacity of post-phenomenological geographies of experience within specific sites to enable a greater appreciation of how this kind of hope comes to matter. The materiality of hope can then be construed as a contestation with the monstrous; between future connection and past violence.

Tourism yield measures for Cambodia

This paper develops new measures of tourism yield in the context of Cambodia, a developing country in South East Asia. It first sets out some data regarding tourism in Cambodia and the reasons for tourism being identified as a tool for economic development and poverty alleviation. It then sets out the method and findings of a study by the International Finance Corporation-Mekong Private Sector Development Facility to develop standard and extended measures of tourism yield to assess the pro-poor impact of international tourism in Cambodia. These yield measures extend earlier work undertaken by the first author. It then discusses the policy implications of the findings. It is concluded that while tourism goes some way in reducing poverty in Cambodia, informed policy initiatives can enhance the effect. It is argued that different visitor yield measures provide an important basis for the development of strategies to increase tourism's pro-poor impact. A substantial barrier to the formulation of appropriate policies to increase the pro-poor benefits of Cambodia arises from the limited data available in poor countries generally.

Post‐conflict Heritage and Tourism in Cambodia: The Burden of Angkor

The World Heritage Site of Angkor is enduring one of the most crucial, turbulent periods in its 1200‐year history. Since the early 1990s over 20 countries have contributed millions of dollars to help safeguard and restore its temples. As one of Southeast Asia’s premier destinations, Angkor has also seen a 10,000% growth in international tourist arrivals in just over a decade. The challenges arising from the intense convergence of these two paradoxical and unstable agendas—heritage conservation and tourism development—are greatly compounded by Cambodia’s need to recover from war and turmoil. This paper explores the critical trends that have surfaced at Angkor and why the challenges posed by surging tourism have been inadequately addressed. It argues Angkor’s dominant role within Cambodia’s post‐conflict heritage and tourism industries requires closer, more critical attention given recent events in the country. This article is the summary of Winter's book Post‐conflict Heritage, Post‐colonial Tourism (Routledge 2007).

The Political Economy of Tourism in Cambodia

This paper provides an overview of the historical development of the Cambodian political economy and the role of tourism in shaping it since the early 1990s when Cambodia opened its door to the world. The paper provides a general overview of tourism products and the government's policies in tourism development in Cambodia and then examines the perceived impacts of tourism on socio-economic development. It is argued that tourism plays an important role in socio-economic development and national identity promotion, but that proper management of tourism is required to control the spread of HIV/AIDS and child sex tourism.

Evaluating the Competitiveness of the Tourism Industry in Cambodia: Self-assessment from Professionals

The annual tourism growth rate in Cambodia is among the highest in the world; however, tourist industry impact on Cambodian's economy is quite low. The purpose of our study is to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the Cambodian tourism market so that a framework can be established to help the country's policy-makers formulate strategies to use its resources effectively to create sustainable tourism competitiveness. This study used the perspective of tourism experts in the industry and Ministry of Tourism in Cambodia, and academia in the tourism field to evaluate Cambodian tourism competitiveness relative to its major competitors in ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) based on nine categories: endowed resources, created resources, supporting factors, destination management, situational conditions, demand condition, technology, openness and market performance indicators benchmarked from previous research. The results showed that Cambodia has a lot of endowed resources, but lacks supporting resources and factors to achieve tourism competitiveness.