PHNOM PENH - TOURIST arrivals in Cambodia were up eight per cent in 2008, half the expected growth as Thailand's airport closures and the global credit crunch took their toll, the tourism minister said Sunday.

In the first half of last year arrivals soared 13 per cent, and the Ministry of Tourism projected that growth over the year would top 15 per cent.

But Cambodia felt the pinch in the last half of 2008 from the world financial crisis, while protests shuttered Bangkok's two main airports in late November, closing a major transit hub to Cambodia for over a week.

'We expected foreign tourist arrivals to increase between 15 to 20 per cent, but it increased only about eight percent compared to 2007,' Tourism Minister Thong Khon told AFP.

'It only slightly increased because of the financial crisis ... people stop spending much money like before ... and (because of) the instability in Thailand, which is one of the two important gateways,' he said.

Thong Khon said about 31 percent of tourists enter Cambodia via Thailand.

Many holiday-makers also transit through Vietnam.

Altogether, 2.15 million people visited the impoverished kingdom in 2008, up from about two million in 2007. Arrivals then had jumped 20 per cent from 2006.

'I guarantee that the number of the tourist arrivals will increase next year, though not by too much,' Mr Thong Khon said.

Tourism remains one of the few sources of foreign exchange for Cambodia, where millions live in poverty after decades of civil strife.

The Angkor temples in northwestern Siem Reap province are the main draw, but the government has been developing a number of other tourism initiatives as part of a broader plan to keep foreigners in Cambodia longer. -- AFP