Trip.com suspends partnership with Cambodia amid border clashes, cyber concerns

Trip.com Group, the biggest online travel agency in China, said on Thursday that its partnership with Cambodia’s tourism authority was suspended, in a move to address the Chinese public’s heightened sensitivity over safety in the Southeast Asian country.

The company, which operates the Ctrip and Qunar sites in mainland China, said the collaboration – originally scheduled to run from September 2025 to March 2026 – “had been suspended due to recent safety alerts issued by the Chinese Embassy in Cambodia”.

“The partnership never actually launched,” the company said after the initiative, announced earlier this month, sparked an online backlash. As tensions between Cambodia and Thailand have escalated, some Chinese travellers expressed fears of being targeted by cross-border scam syndicates.

Since the start of December, the Chinese Embassy has issued five warnings, four regarding border clashes and one about scams. In recent years, some Chinese have been lured abroad with the promise of high-paying jobs, especially to Southeast Asia, only to end up working in scam factories. The embassy said that 46 Chinese nationals had successfully been rescued from digital scam centres in Cambodia since late November.

In the Thursday statement, Trip.com also moved to quell fears regarding data security, stating that its deal with Cambodia “does not involve any data cooperation and under no circumstances does it entail the disclosure of user privacy information”. Its Cambodia deal had prompted some users to threaten to uninstall the app from their phones as a boycott.

Trip.com added that it “undergoes annual network data security risk assessments by relevant authorities, having successfully completed the 2025 assessment in October”.

The suspension comes as Cambodia is trying to attract more Chinese tourists, with plans to trial visa-free visits by Chinese citizens from June 15 to October 15, 2026. In the first 10 months of 2025, Cambodia received around 1 million Chinese tourists, accounting for more than 20 per cent of the total of 4.8 million international visitors, according to the country’s tourism minister Huot Hak.

The Cambodia Tourism Board earlier this month insisted that the country “remains safe and fully open” and its “primary destinations”, including Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, operate “without interruption”.