Asia’s tourist hot spots are missing European visitors

Tuk-tuk driver Khon Mony normally shuttles at least four groups of tourists to the ancient stone spires of Angkor Wat in Cambodia each week. But in all of May, he did not get a single customer.

He blames the war raging more than 3,000 miles away in the Middle East.

Since the United States and Israel attacked Iran in late February, airfares have soared — doubled on some routes — and the fighting has repeatedly disrupted flights at the commercial aviation hubs of Dubai and Doha.

While the tourism industries of Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand have largely been resilient because of regional travel, some towns and cities that rely on European travelers have suffered. Many European tourists have canceled trips to these hot spots in favor of holidays closer to home in recent months, travel industry officials said.

This has imposed immense financial difficulties on Khon, 30. Each time he prepared his 7-month-old baby’s formula, he said, he used one scoop of powdered milk instead of the recommended 2 1/2, so he could stretch a can from 10 days to three weeks.

“I worry that my daughter is not healthy because I cannot give her enough milk like before,” said Khon, as he looked out across a quiet street in Siem Reap, a major tourism hub in Cambodia.

The fallout from the war is the most jarring disruption to Southeast Asia’s vital tourism industry since the COVID pandemic, according to travel industry officials.

In Cambodia, international arrivals in the first three months of this year declined by 45% compared with the same period last year, tourism officials said. Khon said that he used to earn an average of about 82,000 Cambodian riel, or $20, a day ferrying visitors. That has now dropped to less than $5 a day.

Businesses at Siem Reap Angkor International Airport have slashed work hours. Lam Lan, 25, a cook at an airport restaurant, said his shifts had been cut from 30 days a month to around 20 since March. His monthly earnings dropped from $250 to less than $150.

After factoring in gasoline costs and debt payments, Lam said he had just enough to buy soy milk for his 1-year-old daughter while his wife was pregnant with their second child.

“I am worried about my second baby because I do not have money saved for his birth,” Lan said.

Chrun Kimseng, 59, a tour guide who has led Spanish-speaking travelers through Angkor Wat for more than 30 years, said he was making 35% less than what he did before the Iran war started. To compensate, he started growing vegetables and raising chickens to reduce his food expenses.

“My income now is only enough for survival,” he said.

In neighboring Thailand’s Phang Nga province, there is a similar crisis. Hotel bookings there have dropped by around 50% since the war began, local officials said.

At Surakul Pier — the main gateway for boat tours to Koh Khao Phing Kan, an island that featured in a James Bond film — the financial damage was visible. Where a steady procession of minibuses and long-tail boats once carried thousands of tourists a day, dozens of vessels now sit idle, rocking quietly at their moorings.

“I don’t know how long we can survive,” said Channipha Laklaem, 46, who collects the pier’s boat fees of 10 Thai baht, or $0.30. There had been almost no trips to collect fees from since the war began, she said.

Her husband, a boat operator for 16 years, has not had any customers since April, she said. The family now relies entirely on her $243 monthly wage. She said she stopped along the roadside every evening on her way home to forage for wild ivy gourd leaves and melinjo fruit to boil into a basic soup for her husband and two children.

“We used to go out over the weekend for entertainment with the kids. We used to eat out,” Channipha said. “Not anymore. It’s a luxury we cannot afford.”

Rungrat Huailek, 53, who has run boat tours in Phang Nga for 30 years, said that with the European tourists gone, residents were cutting nonessential expenses. He said his monthly earnings had dropped from around $900 to about $300, and he was forced to burn through most of his savings.

When his teenage daughter asked to go on a vacation during a recent school break, he asked her to buy a snack at the nearest convenience store. That, he said, was the only outing they could afford.

“Things look so bleak now,” Rungrat said. “All I can do is pray and be patient.”

The Indonesian island of Bali, a global tourist hot spot, has been more resilient. Its economy has been insulated from the shock of the Iran war by a steady stream of travelers from Australia and China. But local tour operators who catered specifically to European visitors said they were worried about the coming months.

Gov. Wayan Koster of Bali said the Iran war had reduced the number of European visitors who reached the island by transiting through Middle Eastern travel hubs. Putu Winastra, chair of the island’s tour agency association, said he had frozen salaries at his company because he expected bookings to drop by 45% this year.

Bali’s tourism officials have launched an urgent campaign to find new customers elsewhere, sending sales missions to Australia, China, Singapore and South Korea, Winastra said. The Indonesian government has also waived taxes on domestic economy airfares to encourage Indonesians to holiday at home.

With no clear end to the war in sight, tourism workers are improvising to survive. Some boat operators in Phang Nga have returned to fishing or taken farm jobs. In the nearby Thai resort town of Khao Lak, nail beautician Nantipa Yamsantia, 41, said she had begun training to become a masseuse.

In Siem Reap, Khon still shows up at the taxi stand every morning, waiting for fares that rarely materialize. A former kitchen hand, he is weighing whether to abandon his tuk-tuk entirely to look for restaurant work, even though local eateries are also trimming staff hours.

For now, he is cutting down on what he eats so he can give a little more porridge to his daughter.

“I have no other choice,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.