‘Hotels Joining Hands’ during COVID-19

The travel industry has been devastated by COVID-19 with both international and local travel having come to a standstill in many places around the world as people deal with the direct and indirect problems caused by this pandemic. Most people have now accepted that the path to recovery will be long and testing and the future seems uncertain and bleak for many.

We have closely followed the situation in Siem Reap, Cambodia, our home for more than 5 years and somewhere that we hold close to our hearts. With the borders effectively closed, tourism has ground to a halt. The magnificent Angkor Wat and the surrounding complex of temples attracted 2.2 million foreign visitors in 2019 but these numbers have dropped by a staggering 95%. The only visitors now are the handful of tourists who are ‘stranded’ in Cambodia, and expats who have remained present during the crisis. Communities like this, that rely on tourism for survival, will be some of the…