.png)
Opinion: Build the Park, Not the Crowd — and the Right Tourists Will Come
- Mar 28
- 6 min read
Junior Research Fellow
Future Forum's junior research fellow, Keolakena Kin was published in The Cambodianess on March 28th, 2026. Check out the original article HERE, and read it below!
Cambodia doesn’t need more tourists—it needs the right ones. Chasing quick wins and attention-driven arrivals has trapped the country in a race it cannot sustain. What it needs instead is a deliberate shift: a value-based model rooted in Khmer identity, living heritage, and the texture of everyday urban life.
Build that well, and the rest follows—visitors who stay longer, spend more thoughtfully, and come not for spectacle, but for something real.
The Strategic Problem: When Tourism Policy Chases Trends, Not Values
The Siem Reap Tourism Development Master Plan 2021–2035 (Master Plan) presents an ambitious vision of sustainability, service quality, and international competitiveness. However, beneath its language of “green tourism” and “quality services,” the plan remains fundamentally tourism-centric rather than culture-centric. Its core logic continues to prioritize attracting visitors through infrastructure expansion, themed tourism products, accommodation standards, and destination promotion.
This approach reflects a broader regional tendency to treat tourism demand as something to be actively pursued, rather than something that should naturally emerge from strong cultural values. While the Master Plan acknowledges heritage conservation and environmental management, it largely frames culture as a tourism asset to be packaged, managed, and consumed—rather than as a living system that should first serve Cambodian society itself.
Such an approach risks repeating patterns seen elsewhere in Southeast Asia, where cities increasingly shape themselves to satisfy artificially constructed tourist desires rather than uphold local values. In these cases, tourism growth becomes dependent on novelty, trendiness, and entertainment-oriented consumption, resulting in short stays, superficial engagement, and cultural dilution.
Siem Reap has not yet reached this stage—but the Master Plan does little to prevent it.
Why Attention-Driven Tourism Is Not Sustainable
Tourism strategies that prioritize quick attraction and mass appeal over the enhancement and preservation of culture are inherently fragile. To keep visitor numbers high, they rely on ongoing advertising, spectacular displays, and increasingly radical offerings.
This causes cultural identity and urban quality to deteriorate over time. Thailand is an example that clearly illustrates these risks. In some destinations, tourism has become associated primarily with nightlife, adult entertainment, and consumption-driven experiences. Tourists arrive briefly, extract value, and leave with minimal cultural understanding. These strategies may attract large numbers of tourists and spur consumption-oriented activity, but they also generate social tension, reputational damage, and long-term reliance on low-value tourism.
Cambodia should not aspire to compete on these terms. The Master Plan’s emphasis on expanding entertainment zones, food streets, luxury river tourism, and themed circuits—without a corresponding strategy to strengthen cultural depth and intellectual life—risks pushing Siem Reap toward a similar trajectory. Even well-intentioned initiatives, such as riverfront development, are framed more as tourism products than as civic or cultural spaces.
This reveals a fundamental policy gap: the plan focuses on attracting tourists, but not on what kind of country Cambodia wants to be when tourists arrive.
Build the Park to Attract the Butterfly
Cambodia’s strategic advantage lies precisely in what it has not yet lost: Khmer culture, architecture, cuisine, language, and social rhythms remain comparatively intact. Rather than following the commercial and artificial path taken elsewhere, Cambodian tourism policy should therefore follow a different principle: Do not chase the butterfly—build the park.
“Chasing the butterfly” means designing cities around trends, attention, and external expectations. It requires constant adjustment and compromise, and it rarely produces lasting respect. “Building the park”, by contrast, means investing in enduring value: preserving old buildings, improving the quality and authenticity of Khmer food, protecting public spaces, enforcing architectural coherence, and maintaining cultural confidence in daily life.
When the park is meaningful, visitors come naturally. France is a good point of reference. Cities in France do not change to draw tourists. Rather, they preserve public order, architecture, food, and cultural standards.
Tourists adjust to France, not the other way around. As a result, tourists are more likely to stay longer, act with more decency, and fully immerse themselves in the local way of life. And it is well known for its UNESCO World Heritage Sites, varied landscapes, rich cultural legacy, and superb cuisine.
Cambodia can adopt a similar stance—one grounded in Khmer values rather than imported tourism models.
Policy Initiative and Implementation
Policy should focus on two main recommendations: prioritize the strength of Khmer culture and heritage, and enhance the everyday quality of life for residents. These principles should guide all tourism development efforts.
It is curical to preserve and adaptively reuse historic buildings instead of replacing them with incompatible developments. This approach aims to protect key cultural sightlines and ensure that the new infrastructure and existing structures are visually compatible with the riverfront’s intended character. For instance, demolishing the new ABA bank next to Temple Bar, where it is an absolute eyesore.
Promote authentic Khmer cuisine by investing in food quality and professional training, not just promotion. Rather than relying solely on advertising iconic dishes, the Ministry of Tourism should strengthen hygiene standards, culinary education for chefs and food vendors, and refine traditional recipes to embody true Khmer flavors and professional presentation. These efforts will build national pride and international respect for Khmer cuisine.
It is also important to treat public spaces, especially the Siem Reap River, as civic parks rather than commercial tourism corridors. Public areas should be designed and maintained to serve residents first, while remaining welcoming to visitors.
Well-maintained cycling paths and pedestrian walkways should encourage walking and cycling rather than car-centric movement. These spaces should be envisioned as high-quality community environments where students, researchers, digital nomads, children, women, and the elderly can gather safely and peacefully.
Activities such as meditation, study, art exhibitions, and cultural displays should be encouraged, creating a calm and inclusive atmosphere rather than one dominated by loud music, noise, and mass-tourism-oriented commercialization.
Meanwhile, implementing and enforcing clear regulations on architecture, noise, and urban design will be crucial in the process. Preserving visual harmony and reducing noise pollution protects cultural character, dignity, and aesthetic consistency in both historic and public areas. And upholding calm and order will enhance long-term cultural value and sustainable tourism.
It is important to adopt a “Plug-In and Play” policy framework for sustainable tourism engagement. The proposed approach is best described as “plug-in and play”, a system design principle in which long-term, meaningful engagement is the default outcome.
In this context, “plug-in and play” does not imply superficial convenience, but rather the creation of institutional, regulatory, and operational systems that enable visitors to seamlessly integrate into longer, deeper experiences once they enter the country. When systems are designed to favor duration, learning, and continuity, visitors naturally “plug into” the destination and are encouraged to remain engaged over time.
For example, the Angkor ticketing system could be redesigned so that, rather than positioning the one-day pass as the default option, the policy could establish a three-day or a week minimum ticket as the standard offering. Visitors who perceive value in extended access are implicitly encouraged to stay longer. Those who wish to visit briefly may still do so, but the system is intentionally structured to nudge behaviour toward longer stays.
This approach aligns with the nature of Angkor itself. Angkor is not a single attraction to be consumed quickly; it is a civilizational landscape requiring time, contextual understanding, and respect. Heritage policy should therefore discourage rushed, extractive visitation models and instead promote sustained engagement.
The same “plug-in and play” logic should extend to residency and stay-duration policies. When everyday administrative and operational decisions—such as ticketing, access, permits, and mobility—consistently favor longer engagement, the destination organically becomes more attractive to high-quality, long-stay visitors.
Let Tourism Follow Culture, Not Lead It
For many years, Cambodians have looked to Thailand as a model and have called for Cambodia to adopt policies to emulate Thailand's tourism revenues. However, their success comes at a high cost: social disruption, the commercialization of culture, and shifts in public mindset that favor short-term gain over true value.
Cambodia has its advantage precisely in that it remains unspoiled, and Cambodia should avoid following short-term trends. The country instead needs to adopt policies that build the value of its culture, heritage, and daily life, as encapsulated in one guiding principle: "Build the park to attract the butterfly."
In a nutshell, tourism should emerge from cultural vitality rather than serve as its primary driver.
When Khmer identity is strong, confident, and visibly lived through language, heritage, education, and everyday practices, it naturally attracts longer-stay visitors, students, researchers, and global talent who seek meaning rather than mere entertainment.
This approach shifts tourism away from short-term consumption toward deeper engagement, supporting economic diversification while preserving cultural dignity and long-term national confidence.
Comments