SIHANOUKVILLE: The Minister of Tourism, Thong Khon, has described the Mekong Tourism Forum as a comprehensive Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) cooperation forum between governments, policymakers, institutions, experts, relevant authorities, the private sector, the tourism industry and other stakeholders, where the best practices, experiences, current status of tourism development, market study and tourism promotion in the GMS can be discussed and shared.

Minister Thong Khon made these remarks at the opening ceremony of the Mekong Tourism Forum 2023, held under the theme "Rethinking for Resilience and Digitalization", at the Independent Hotel Sihanoukville on Tuesday, 25 April 2023. The forum will be attended by more than 250 delegates from 19 countries, and other relevant institutions.

Minister Thong Khon requested all GMS member countries to continue actively implementing existing plans and priority activities, such as the Mekong Tourism Strategy 2016-2025. This includes increasing participation in public-private partnership activities and promoting communication as well as the joint promotion of tourism under the slogan, "Six countries, One destination". He highlighted the implementation of the GMS Tourism Recovery Communication Plan and joint promotion activities to support the integrated recovery of sustainable tourism in the Greater Mekong Subregion.

The Tourism Minister also called for the implementation of GMS Tourism Recovery Toolkits to help stakeholders in the tourism industry rebuild the sector more effectively, while continuing to work with international development partners, private sector organizations and private sector media to promote resilience.

He expressed hope that key stakeholders from the public and private sectors will create a unique opportunity to promote innovative and collaborative frameworks for the recovery of tourism towards resilience in the post-Covid-19 era, reinstating what was lost in the tourism sector, especially in regard to business and tourism revenue.

It should be noted that in 2022, Cambodia received more than 2.28 million international tourists, including 1.5 million tourists from GMS countries, earning about US $1.4 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, Cambodia also recorded 14 million domestic tourists, generating about US $650 million in revenue, comprising about 3.6% of the GDP.