Assessing tourism market potential in a dynamic emerging economy

Purpose – Cambodia's tourism sector has increasingly been playing a crucial role and is the key to the country's socio‐economic development. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how value changes in Cambodian society affect development of the tourism industry and to evaluate the events having potential impact on tourism market development. Design/methodology/approach – The Delphi qualitative forecasting technique has been utilized in a variety of settings as a powerful market research tool. In this empirical study, the Delphi method is utilized to predict the future tourism and hospitality scenarios for Cambodia from 2005 through 2020, as well as their marketing policy implications at regional and national levels. A representative sample of diverse groups of Cambodia tourism and hospitality industry experts were pooled for data collection. Findings – The study results indicate that experts predict more structural changes will be taking place in the tourism and hospitality industry. An interesting study finding is that most of the tourism and hospitality events will take place in the medium and long‐term horizon. It is predicted that there will not be much change in value orientations of Cambodians, except for significant change in high value of materialism and interactive learning and cultural exchanges. Practical implications – The research offers implications for tourism researchers, the Cambodian government tourism ministry, as well as tourism industry actors. Originality/value – The paper offers greater insights into the working of qualitative forecasting in the development of tourism market planning in emerging markets.