ambodia’s three-day Sankranti festival, or the traditional New Year celebration, ended on Sunday with 13.1 million people traveling to various tourist attractions across the kingdom, Tourism Minister Thong Khon said on Monday.

Sankranti festival is the largest annual holiday in the Southeast Asian nation. On the occasion, revellers participate in religious ceremonies, visit their families in home provinces, and go to tourist destinations for leisure.

“During the New Year celebrations from April 14 to April 16, a total of 13.1 million tourists, including 55,691 foreigners, had travelled across the country,” Khon said in a news release.

“The number is much higher than expected and also higher than that of the pre-COVID-19 pandemic era,” he added.

In the pre-pandemic era, the Ministry of Tourism recorded 4.6 million locals and 83,000 foreigners traveling across the country during the New Year holiday in 2019.

Khon attributed the sharp rise in New Year travellers to the country’s full peace and successful control of the COVID-19. He said the top five tourist destinations were Siem Reap province, Battambang province, Kampong Cham province, Phnom Penh Municipality, and Preah Sihanouk province.

Siem Reap is home to the Angkor Archaeological Park, a world heritage site. The province received 2.1 million tourists, including 13,373 foreign ones, during the holiday.

“Overall, security, safety and public order had been maintained well during the New Year holiday,” the minister said.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said last Friday that the Sankranti festival would definitely give a boost to the recovery of the pandemic-devastated tourism industry.

He said the country is expected to attract more than 4 million international tourists in 2023, doubling the 2.2 million international visitors it received in 2022. Xinhua