+++++ ! Good points.

Sailorman wrote:The Answer (just like Ko Samui and Puket) is more airlines flying into Snooky. The monopoly that Angkor Air(Vietnam Air) has needs to be broken. The landing "fees" need to be lowered. Air Asia wanted to fly to Snooky, but the "fees" were so high they gave up. Cambodia Air (Philippine Air) has airplanes on the tarmac in the Philippines ready to fly in Cambodia including Snooky, but the Vietnamese controlled government won't sign the paperwork.

I would wager that direct flights Singapore/Snooky would be full of people ready to gamble and lay on a beach at a fraction of the cost in Singapore. This will never happen as long as Vietnamese Air (Vietnamese government) hold a monopoly on air travel to Snooky. (They don't really want to fly people to Snooky, but to their new airport (in Vietnam) on the island just south of Snooky.

Has nothing to do with Angkor Air or the dreaded Vietnamese. With the brief exception of the PMT debacle, all routes to Sihanoukville were wide open for 14+ years (from the time RAC dropped it in 97 until Angkor Air picked it up in 2011 or 12). The government couldn't pay an airline to fly there. They've even tried threatening to pull other more lucrative routes in order to force the addition of SHV routes on airlines that want to fly in Cambodia. Nobody has ever wanted it because there simply arent enough mainstream tourists interested in going there. They are lucky Angkor Air has put on a few flights a week from Siem Reap, and even those flights are of very marginal viability. Sihanoukville has a terrible reputation, very average beachs, and little else to offer besides a couple of tiny third-rate casinos. The place needs to seriously up its game before they can expect internationals to want to fly there.

LTO wrote:The place needs to seriously up its game before they can expect internationals to want to fly into the place.

Its sort of a double edged knife though, because they need internationals flying into the place before they'll up their game considerably.

The new really high end Chinese resort out in Ream (Sun and Moon) will probably open fully this coming high season... a bunch of cashed up Chinese coming in may help trigger it as well. It's a really cool place, The General and I went there with some friends for a swim and had a look around the rooms that were just being finished... VERY cool rooms, clean private beach, secluded... pretty nice place.

And there is some local government issue with the airport, and the proposed new one, and pocket lining.

If they can't even get them to fly in from Siem Reap Angkor in numbers, they certainly won't be able to fill planes to fly them in internationally as a primary destination. They need a reason for people to go there, and dirty, poorly developed beaches don't cut it.

I took the CAA flight to Sihanoukville last month and it was full. I flew during their sale period, though, so I doubt it's always like that. Tourists do want to fly there, though. They want to go to the islands and Kep and it's easier to fly to Sihanoukville than take the bus.

Only 1 beach is dirty, but that's the 1 everybody goes to. This is quite fortunate for us locals. You should have seen it Khmer New Years. I brought some BKK friends down to Khin's Shack and the parking lots were giant lakes of piss & shit from the over taxed bathrooms. All of this is funneled into the sea & 1000s of Khmer are blissfully playing away in this virtual cesspool. I'm surprised there wasn't an Ebola outbreak. It took about 2 -3 weeks to dry up. The water at Victory can get sketchy in an oily way since it's so close to the port as well.

LTO wrote:If they can't even get them to fly in from Siem Reap Angkor in numbers, they certainly won't be able to fill planes to fly them in internationally as a primary destination. They need a reason for people to go there, and dirty, poorly developed beaches don't cut it.

Considering the busses are often full of people who flew into PP then bussed down here, I think you'd be surprised. Because they would fly direct from home to here instead of from home to PP to SR to SV more people would be inclined to use it. SR to PP is sort of a silly route... not nearly as many people come here for both locations as come for either one individually. PP has very little to offer really for people looking for some nice tropical getaway time... which a number of the tourists down here are. They are just forced to fly into PP to get here, and aren't going to fork out an additional couple of hundred dollars to get down, so they take the bus. Figure a bus seats about 50 people or so, and you'll easily see 10-15 of them coming in a week (high season) loaded full to at least halfway with tourists from PP during high season (for here or Kampot/Kep with here as a stopping point), and you're looking at a full flight or two. Add it in as a leg of a PP flight and it's VERY easily justified as a stop and drop if there's no additional landing fees making it overly costly.

Not sure the last time you were down here for a high season LTO, but the down actually gets pretty damn busy. This year wasn't "great" for the businesses, but the town was still full of people constantly... not even counting the people who were packing the islands at the same time.

When my buddy flew in on CAA it was a full flight as well, with lots of nice cars and hotel agents waiting in the parking lot to do pick up service, and it wasn't a sales period... they each paid like $250 a ticket to fly from SR.

There are easily a dozen 3-4 star hotels in Shv. And the only people who travel via Thailand do so from the western side. From the eastern side the planes travel via Malaysia/Korea/Singapore.