How's Business in Cambodia? Exclusive Video Interview with Richard Dusome, MD of Dara Hotels

Despite COVID19, the Kingdom of Cambodia has had many reasons to celebrate in the past 12 months.

In December, the country extracted its first drop of crude oil, and then in June its first commercial gold mining operation got underway in Mondulkiri province with aims of producing 3 tonnes of gold ore per year.

Construction of a brand new 60,000-seat national stadium in Phnom Penh was recently completed, and plenty of other projects to improve the country's infrastructure and accessibility are currently underway, with many nearing completion.

Cambodia was also the first country in ASEAN to receive COVID19 vaccines through the COVAX scheme, and has one of the most impressive vaccination rates in the region having already vaccinated 88.35% of the targeted 10 million people aged 18 years and above, 62.87% of the targeted under-18s population of 1,966,931, and 62.95% of the overall population of 16 million people (as of 25 August 2021).

To learn more about the projects and how COVID19 has impacted the hotel and tourism industry in Cambodia, Steven Howard of TravelNewsAsia.com spoke with Richard Dusome, Managing Director of Dara Hotels, over Skype on 25 August 2021.

In this latest discussion, which follows their in person interview at the Cambodia Travel Mart in 2019, Richard tells us more about some of the important tourism-related infrastructure developments in Cambodia, how Dara Hotels has been impacted by the pandemic, whether the company has used the downtime to invest in properties, what the pipeline is like now, and what plans the company has for the ASEAN Tourism Forum 2022 which is currently scheduled to take place in Sihanoukville in January.

You will also discover how the country is looking to develop its domestic tourism industry, some of the challenges it faces in doing so, and which areas of the country Richard feels have the most potential for growth.

Richard also shares his thoughts on expanding the aviation sector in the country, which markets he would like to see airlines target, and how he believes COVID19 has changed leisure travel. All that and much, much more in the video and podcast below.

How's Business in Cambodia - Interview with Richard Dusome, MD of Dara Hotels

PODCAST

Editor's note: As the above video interview was conducted over the internet, I would like to apologise that the audio and visual quality are not up to the same HD/UHD quality that it normally would be. Hopefully it won't be too long until we are once again conducting exclusive video interviews in person, but for now we have to make do with what we have. Thank you.

See also: How's Business in Cambodia? Exclusive Interview with MD of Dara Hotels, Richard Dusome (October 2019).

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