Enterprise development
New skills help Cambodian tourism sector build back from dark days of COVID
The ILO has supported the Cambodian Ministry of Tourism to strengthen business resilience and sustainability for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) within the tourism sector, which were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Cambodian tourism sector was severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic with tourism workers losing their jobs and business owners left struggling to survive.
The training on digital marketing and e-commerce skills was delivered to some 130 participants from micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. Those taking part included customer service managers from hotels, restaurants and bars as well as representatives from hospitality schools and the government.
A participant who is an e-commerce and distribution manager at a hotel in Phnom Penh said: “We had very difficult time during the COVID-19 pandemic period. I am happy I joined this training programme to learn about social media marketing and to exchange knowledge with other people in the tourism sector. With what we learned from the training today, I would like to sustain and further develop our hotel business to serve more guests with better quality service.”
The ILO is supporting the Cambodian Ministry of Tourism to implement its Strategic Plan for Recovering and Developing Tourism 2021-2025. The MSME Business Resilience module on digitalization, provided by the ILO for this training, covered basic knowledge of digital marketing; how to use social media to reach more customers, how to establish a brand online, and how to sell and deliver products or services in online business.
The MSME Business Resilience training modules are open source for any organizations and individuals, and available at ILO Peer Learning Hub website.
This training programme was supported by the Government of Japan through the ILO/Japan Fund for Building Social Safety Nets in Asia and the Pacific (SSN Fund).