Cambodia's Sokimex Group Building 5-Star Hotel in Phnom Penh

PHNOM PENH, Aug 11 Asia Pulse - Cambodia's Sokimex group has held a ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of a five-star hotel in Phnom Penh in an effort to improve tourism infrastructure in the country.

The US$100 million hotel, the third of its kind in Phnom Penh, is expected to be full operational in two years time.

The 16-floor hotel, once completed, will have 799 rooms, two great conference halls and 10 ballrooms.

At present, the Cambodian capital has only two five-star hotels and four four-star ones. Meanwhile, the number of foreign travellers going to Cambodia has increased rapidly, reaching 1.1 million people in the first half of 2008, up 13 per cent over the same period of last year.

The Cambodian tourism authorities have set a target of attracting 2.5 million foreign travellers this year, as compared with over 2 million visitors in 2007.

Sokimex, established in the early 1980s, is one of Cambodia's biggest business groups.