China's Xiamen Airlines has launched direct flights between East China's Xiamen city and Cambodia's Phnom Penh capital city with the aim of further enhancing bilateral tourism and economic ties, officials said on Jan 29.
Mao Havanall, Cambodian secretary of state for civil aviation, said the airlines had used a Boeing 737-800 jet to operate four weekly flights between the two destinations and its first flight landed in Phnom Penh on Jan 28.
"The launching of this new route will actively promote the cooperation policy between China and Cambodia and lay a solid foundation for the tourism industry in Cambodia to attract two million Chinese tourists by 2020," he said during an event celebrating the inaugural Xiamen-Phnom Penh flight.
Zheng Congming, general manager of passenger marketing and sales committee of Xiamen Airlines, said, "We hope that with the opening of this new route, more Chinese tourists will come to Cambodia, and at the same time, more Cambodian travelers will visit Xiamen, a scenic city of Fujian province."
China is the biggest source of tourists to Cambodia. According to tourism data, the Southeast Asian country attracted 1.21 million Chinese tourists in 2017, accounting for 21.6 percent of the total international tourists to the kingdom.
China has decided to extend its visa waiver policy to ordinary passport holders from Canada and the United Kingdom starting from Feb 17.
Forty-one new port-of-entry duty-free shops have been established nationwide, with Xiamen Xiang'an International Airport, Xiamen Wutong Passenger Wharf, and Xiamen International Cruise Center included on the list.
