When people think of Cambodia, a few images come to mind: Angkor Wat, the shadow of the Khmer Rouge, and, more recently, headlines about online scam compounds. The instinctive response from policymakers has been to market harder, better campaigns, bigger budgets, and more promotion. But this diagnoses the wrong problem. Cambodia doesn't have an image problem. It has an identity vacuum. And no marketing campaign fills a vacuum.
A country's reputation is not built by asking the world to visit. It is built by giving the world something to feel. That feeling doesn't emerge naturally; it is built through deliberate policy. For example, South Korea increased government spending on cultural exports from $14 million in 1998 to $84 million in just three years, and by 2023, the figure had reached $622 million annually. France has treated culture as a matter of sovereignty since 1959, spending around €4.4 billion per year at the national level, while its cultural and creative industries generate €91 billion in revenue, more than agriculture and the automotive industry combined. Neither country began with tourism campaigns. South Korea built global attachment through dramas and music, while France exported its identity through cuisine and cultural institutions. In both cases, tourism followed cultural presence. Cambodia has reversed the order, investing in promotion before building the cultural presence that makes promotion meaningful.
Cambodia's policy response has been almost entirely tourism-facing. The "Visit Cambodia: Kingdom of Wonder" campaign has run since 2012. The newly established Cambodia Tourism Board carries a larger promotional budget than the Ministry of Tourism itself. The Tourism Development Plan 2026-2030 focuses on diversification and targeted campaigns. These are not bad initiatives. But they all share the same limitation: they speak to people already considering travel. They do not build relationships with people who have never thought about Cambodia at all. Cambodia does have a National Policy on Culture, and as of 2025, it is still drafting a national policy for its cultural and creative industries with UNESCO support. But the gaps its own policymakers identify, adequate funding, export support, and international market access for Cambodian culture, remain unaddressed.
Cambodia does not need to copy South Korea or France by matching their cultural budgets. The lesson is not the size of spending, but the sequence of investment. With limited resources, Cambodia should move from broad tourism promotion to targeted cultural investment by supporting a few sectors with global potential, such as cuisine, contemporary music, fashion, film, and digital arts. Small grants, creative training, intellectual property protection, translation support, international partnerships, and export channels can help Cambodian culture travel beyond tourism. Culture should be treated not only as a tourism decoration, but as an economic and diplomatic asset. Only when Cambodia builds this creative ecosystem will tourism promotion have something meaningful to amplify.