Cambodia’s border tensions and scam hub stigma harms tourism industry

Cambodia is struggling to recover its tourism sector, as geopolitical tensions and its growing reputation as a cybercrime hub keep tourists at bay.

Once a key driver of the country’s economy, the industry has dwindled to make up 9.4% of its gross domestic product in 2024, compared to 12.1% in 2019, according to data from the tourism ministry released Monday.

Cambodia has been under international scrutiny after reports that it is a central hub for scam center operations. Profits from those illicit activity were reportedly tied to its political elites, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in June 2025.

The Southeast Asian country has also been clashing with its neighbor Thailand over a decades-old border dispute, which erupted into sustained armed conflict throughout 2025 until both sides came to a ceasefire on Dec. 27, 2025.

Prior to that, the two countries had agreed to a ceasefire in June 2025, but fighting had reignited in early December.

Tourism numbers from the Asia-Pacific region to Cambodia suffered the most with a drop of 20% year on year in 2025, according to the ministry.

“The scam center issue resonates a lot more in East Asia, people hear about it a lot more. People in the U.S. and Europe hear less about the scam centers,” said Stephen Higgins, managing partner at Mekong Strategic Capital.

Within the region, the biggest drop in visitorship was from Thailand, which fell over 50%, amid ongoing border tensions.

South Korean tourists plunged 20.6%, after Seoul in October 2025 imposed the most severe tier of its four-level travel warning system, effectively banning travel to parts of Cambodia “where employment fraud and detention have surged”, according to a Google translation of the foreign ministry’s statement.

That follows the death of a South Korean student who was lured into working in a scam compound in Cambodia, and allegedly died after being tortured.

Chinese travelers to Cambodia bucked the wider trend, rising 41.5% in December, but was still less than half of pre-pandemic tourism numbers. That’s another blow to the struggling tourism sector as China is one of the key markets for high-spending tourists in Cambodia, according to ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office’s report in August last year.

China has put pressure on Cambodia to crack down on scam hubs, according to a WeChat post by the Chinese embassy in Cambodia in January, adding that its scam haven reputation risked damaging bilateral relations between the two countries.

In a bid to shake off its tainted reputation and improve diplomatic ties with other countries, Cambodia has been cracking down on the transnational crime operations within its borders.

The country’s authorities have made over 2,000 scam center arrests so far, a spokesperson from Cambodia’s Ministry of Interior said Saturday, as translated by Google.

In early January, Cambodian authorities arrested alleged kingpin behind the scam fraud, Chen Zhi. He has been extradited to China, as confirmed by Beijing’s state media.

Cambodia has been collaborating with South Korea since November 2025 to deal with transnational scam cases. Following the agreement, Seoul in December lowered its travel warning to Cambodia to a Level 2 or Level 1 alert, according to different regions.

On the travel front, Cambodia’s Ministry of Tourism in December introduced a visa exemption to Chinese citizens, for a trial period from June 15 to Oct. 15.

“People feel unsafe about coming to Cambodia, […] so as they shut down that scam industry, hopefully those reputational issues will pass over time,” Mekong Strategic Capital’s Stephen said. “It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen, and then you’ll see the growth in tourism numbers,” he added.