Phnom Penh: Cambodia’s famed Angkor Archaeological Park attracted 33,205 foreign visitors in the first four months of this year, up by 633 per cent year-on-year, authorities said on Monday.
The site made a gross revenue of $1.35 million from ticket sales during the January-April period, an increase of 622 per cent from a year earlier, Xinhua news agency quoted the state-owned Angkor Enterprise as saying.
In April alone, the Angkor Archaeological Park received 13,365 foreign visitors, earning $537,000 from ticket sales, it said.
Officials attributed the tourist recovery to the country fully reopening its borders to vaccinated travellers without quarantine since last November.
“Now, the Angkor attracts about 400 foreign tourists a day, a gradual increase from only 70 per day during the pandemic in the past two years,” Tourism Ministry spokesman Top Sopheak told Xinhua.
Prior to the pandemic, the site received up to 9,000 international visitors a day, he said.
Located in the northwestern Siem Reap province, the 401-square-km Angkor Archaeological Park, inscribed on the Unesco World Heritage List in 1992, is the Southeast Asian country’s most popular tourist destination.
The park includes the famous Angkor Wat Temple, Angkor Thom and the Bayon Temple.
A year before the pandemic, the world heritage site attracted up to 2.2 million foreign visitors in 2019, making $99 million in revenue from ticket sales.
–IANS