Interview with the head of Angkor’s Tourism Management Plan group

The Phnom Penh Post’s interview with Sok Sangvar, who heads the Tourism Management Plan group of the Angkor monuments at APSARA. [Disclosure: Sangvar is a personal friend of mine]

Stopping Angkor Wat being loved to death
Phnom Penh Post, 10 January 2015

It’s often said that the problem with the Angkor Wat complex is that there are too many tourists – more than 2 million pounded the stone steps of the ancient temples last year, and concern about degradation of the sites continues to grow.

The man employed to manage tourism there, 29-year-old Sok Sangvar, the son of Deputy Prime Minister Sok An, thinks differently.

“I have heard it so many times, that there are too many people at Angkor,” Sangvar said last Sunday. “It’s not about the numbers; it’s about how you manage those numbers.”

As head of the Angkor Tourism Management Plan working group, it is his job to come up with solutions to the problems facing the site.

Those problems are documented in the plan, which was created by the Apsara Authority, UNESCO and the Cambodian and Australian governments following a request by UNESCO in 2010.

Full story here.