The Director-General of Tourism of Cambodia visited UNWTO Headquarters during his trip to Madrid last week to discuss plans to host a UNWTO Regional Conference on Tourism Development in Heritage Sites in Siem Reap later this year.

The Director-General, Mr. Tith Chantha, was in Madrid participating in FITUR, Spain´s biggest annual travel trade fair. At FITUR, Mr. Chantha participated in a specially organized Asia Pacific panel session for tourism experts and afterwards visited UNWTO headquarters to discuss upcoming collaboration activities including a regional conference on tourism and heritage sites in Siem Reap.  

¨There is a lot of interest this year in developing tourism around the theme of cultural and natural heritage; ¨ said Luigi Cabrini, Director of UNWTO´s Sustainable Development of Tourism Programme.

¨Siem Reap is one of the most impressive places I have ever visited. It will be the perfect location to hold such a conference.¨

Cambodia, which attracted 2,882,000 international visitors in 2011 according to recently released UNWTO figures, is world-renowned primarily for UNESCO World Heritage-listed Angkor Wat, one of South-East Asia´s most significant archaeological sites. In 2011, 1.5 million people visited Angkor Wat and it is predicted that this number could climb to 1.8 or 1.9 million this year.

Such a high volume of visitors raises numerous issues in the protection of cultural heritage sites, and topics such as congestion, seasonality, access, authenticity and interpretation are key to ensuring the area´s sustainability for future generations.

The UNWTO Regional Conference on Tourism Management in Cultural Heritage Sites will be held in late October/ early November this year and will aim to bring together representatives of UNWTO Member States both in the Asia Pacific Region and internationally.

Interesting Links

• FITUR http://www.ifema.es/fitur_01/
• UNWTO Sustainable Development of Tourism Programme http://sdt.unwto.org/
• Sessions of the UNWTO General Assembly /conferences/ga/ga.php