French Foreign Trade Secretary Anne Marie Idrac visited the 12-storey Sofitel Phnom Penh Phokeethra Hotel construction site on Thursday in recognition of the French-backed investment in the facility, according to the hotel’s area general manager Didier Lamoot. The hotel, slated to open in November this year, is a three-way joint venture by French, Thai and Cambodian firms, he said, but he declined to comment on the amount of capital invested. The hotel is being built on 12 hectares of land – the site of the former Royal Phnom Penh Hotel on Sothearos Boulevard that was burned out during the 2003 anti-Thai rioting. Once complete, it will have 201 rooms, a spa, swimming pool, restaurant and conference hall with a daily cost of up to US$2,500 for a room, Lamoot said. He said he expects the hotel would do well with the growth in tourism, saying the sector had remained bouyant, despite the world economic crisis last year.