Chheut Dina was only a few days into her reduced shift cleaning Siem Reap International Airport when she was told not to come back to work.

After 10 months with practically no tourism, the airport dropped its contract with Dina’s employer in December 2020, forcing her to cut spending on her family of seven and refinance an $11,000 loan she took out before the pandemic. HCC Angkor, the cleaning company contracted by the airport, had earlier reduced Dina and her colleagues’ employment to just one month out of the year due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“Sometimes my kids, when they don’t have to study, they go to the pond or creek or lake to catch fish or snails and vegetables, so we spend less than [before] but we eat less proper food than before,” Dina told Al Jazeera.

With support from her union, Dina and the other HCC employees complained to the company, frustrated that management refused to confirm if they had been fired or just suspended.

The uncertainty around their future has been especially frustrating since the airport started to receive international flights following the country’s reopening of its borders to vaccinated tourists last month.

“If they want to dismiss us from the contract, they need to pay us proper compensation according to the law, then we can look for other job opportunities or get compensation,” Dina said. “This creates a blurred picture, we don’t really know what is going on.”.

Although Cambodia has reopened to international travellers, its tourism centre of Siem Reap, home to UNESCO World Heritage site Angkor Wat, is still reckoning with its reliance on foreigners and the long and unpredictable path towards recovery from the pandemic.

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen lifted quarantine measures for all vaccinated travellers on November 15 – a step beyond Thailand’s reopening, which this week reintroduced seven to 10 days of quarantine for foreign arrivals, except those visiting the Phuket “sandbox,” in response to the Omicron variant.

Arrivals, however, have been few and far between. Before Singapore Airlines resumed its service last week, the city’s airport had not seen a single international flight for 20 months.

Even before the pandemic, Siem Reap, which relied heavily on Chinese tour groups that have since disappeared, had been showing signs of fatigue, with Angkor Archaeological Park ticket sales down 8.3 percent in 2019 compared with the previous year, according to the World Bank.

Khek Norinda, communications director for Cambodia Airports, told Al Jazeera visitors fell 12.4 percent in 2019 compared with 2018, before plummeting further during the pandemic. Before Singapore Airlines resumed its service last week, the city’s airport had not seen a single international flight for 20 months.

While predicting a gradual recovery, Norinda said the return of the airline showed there was still an “appetite” for visiting Siem Reap.

“Also, the experience of visiting the temples without crowds and the hustle and bustle could play in its favour,” he said.

Thourn Sinan, the Cambodian representative for the Pacific Asia Travel Association, told Al Jazeera the government did not clearly communicate its pandemic policies, making it hard for his industry to respond.

“They have very good planning” for the industry in general, he said. “But on the other side with the pandemic era [continuing], they cannot decide what to do.”