A Chinese real estate developer launched a tuitionfree tourism school in Phnom Penh on November 26,2018, aiming to provide high-quality education to poverty-stricken Cambodian youths.

The World Youth Tourism and Hospitality School(WYTHS) will offer a year-and-a-half training course on hotel management and hospitality as well as English and Chinese languages to Cambodian students, said WYTHS principal Li Yanhui.

Yang Shuo, chief executive officer of Guangzhou Yuetai Group in Cambodia, said the school’s purpose is to help train qualified personnel for Cambodia’s tourism industry. The school will provide free education to about 100 high school graduates this year and up to 400 students next year.

Mean Vandet, director of Cambodian Tourism Ministry’s Tourism Professional Training Department,said the ministry fully supports the WYTHS, adding that it would profoundly contribute to human resource development of the tourism sector.

Tourism is one of four pillars supporting Cambodia’s economy. According to a tourism report, the Southeast Asian country received 4.37 million foreign tourists from January to September in 2018, up 11.8 percent year-on-year.

Chinese tourists numbered 1.44 million during the first nine months of 2018, up 71 percent and accounting for 32.9 percent of the total foreign visitors to the kingdom.