2025 was Cambodia’s hardest tourism year in a decade. International arrivals finished at 5.57 million, down almost 17 percent on the previous year, with a 43 percent fall in December. The slide has carried into 2026: arrivals for the first five months were down 47.8 percent year-on-year, and May, at 232,000, was the weakest month yet.
The border conflict with Thailand prompted foreign travel advisories and cancellations across every market. A separate reputation problem, the country’s association with cyber-scam compounds, did real damage in Asian markets too. Prime Minister Hun Manet has pointed to safety fears as the main driver of the downturn and described the scam operations as a black economy undermining the country’s legitimate one. None of that is in dispute.
What’s less understood is that the damage is concentrated where it matters least, and that the one part of Cambodia’s tourism that needs fixing is also the easiest to fix.
Take the scam centers first, since they did the most reputational harm. In mid-2025, the government announced a crackdown on scam compounds, and in April of this year it passed a dedicated anti-scam law. The crackdown has not yet reached all known scam compounds, so the honest reading is that the job is not finished yet. But the direction has been set and the crackdown is being pursued publicly, which may help alleviate foreign visitors’ safety concerns.
