GSM countries turn region as tourism destination in 2010

Mekong River Countries turn region to attract tourism destination

Mekong River Countries including Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand on June 23 met in an international seminar on overland transport to turn potential region of cultural, natural, historic resources to target attraction of tourism destination in a move of taking opportunities from recovery of global financial crisis.

“The overland transport is one of key elements to ensure safety for travelers and facilitate tourism industry procedures in this region and boost region as tourism destination,” H.E Thong Khon said in his opening remark of international seminar in Phnom Penh on June 23.
“We want this seminar to be a key forum to seek, distribute good experience in building regional cooperation for tourism sector in boosting tourism industry for mutual benefits and imporving tourism procedures for travelers, and overland transport at international border gates to be further better in region and particularly we want to seek earning after the recovering from the global financial crisis.
“This crisis provided us much lesson, experience and opportunities for strengthening cooperation of tourism industry. All these will help us to foster further tourism industry and tourism development in region, particularly in GMS framework and ASEAN as whole,” Tourism Minister noted. Not only issue of overland transport but also air, ship transport. “We still have issues of insurance warranty ad custom issues for simple travelling bus,” he added.

The Cambodian government already set up 7 points of tourism development including, facilitation of tourism travelers and reducing barriers unnecessarily, decreasing of tourism package, fostering domestic tourism movement, strengthening quality of tourism products, and producing new products for tourists, and protecting security and safety for tourists,” Tourism Minister stresses. He added that last year we received 2million of foreign tourist increasing 1.7 per cent if comparing with 2008, for four month of this year, we got 884,657 tourists increasing about 10.55 per cent if comparing with same period of 2009. We expected that we will get 2.4 million foreign tourists with increasing 10 per cent in 2010. We have visa for arrival for foreigners, border pass for travelers and car book for facilitating with neighboring countries. We have bus to Laos, Vietnam and Thailand for tourists and good infrastructures for transport tourists. Road link from Vietnam to southern part of Cambodia to Thailand will complete soon and it will turn a road to expand tourism in southern economic corridor of GSM countries,” he emphasized. “Overland travelers to Cambodia accounted for about 40 per cent, a sharp increase over the 24 per cent registered in 2009,” Minister added.

Bun Tee, president of the association of Tourist Guide said that when we already completed the building of Neak Leoeung Bridge over Mekong River in Prey Veng province, it will turn a key road for tourist transport from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand in this region,” he observed.

Mr Khom Douangchantha, director of international relations division of Lao National Tourism Administration said in the seminar that the opportunities to develop overland tourism in Laos. “We focus on setting up the policy to speed up the tourism destination after the global financial crisis recovered. In Laos, tourism has an important role to play in the socio-economic development. It helps people to better understand one another. Lao PDR has placed tourism among the priority sectors in its socio-economic development. “Visa free agreement with 8 ASEAN countries, Exemption of visa for Japanese, Russia, Korea, Mongolia, Switzerland, and Luxembourg tourist,” Mr Khom said, visa on arrival at 15 international border checkpoints and allowing staying in Laos 30 days.



“Laos has a shared border with Cambodia. Laos has been trying to promote the overland linking Laos PDR with Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and China,” he added. “We are trying to implement public transport operation including Vientiane to Siem Reap, Vientiane to Phnom Penh, Pakse to Phnom Penh, and Pakse to Siem Reap, Pakse to Stung Treng,” he noted. He added: We have marketing campaign such as Cambodia-Laos, Vietnam (CLV) one destination. We have policy of improving the facilities at the border through simplifying procedures for immigrant, custom services, providing new equipments and information counter. We developed road network from North to South, from East to West and two bridges across Mekong River (Vientiane capital and savannaket province).



“In 2009, Laos received 2,008,363 tourists and earned 267,700,224 US dollars. At the same time, Laos has top ten tourist market and Thailand stands in first row and Vietnam for second, and China for third row. 90 per cent of tourism was travelled by land and only 10 per cent by air.

“We are trying the development of road network link with neighboring countries and road access to tourist attractions, and develop tourism product. We encourage the government and concerned authorities to further develop facilitation for cross border such as entry formality, tourist information safety and joint tourism packages for our region,” he added. ###