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The South East Asia Travel Show is hosted by Gary Bowerman and Hannah Pearson. Each week, we discuss the hottest travel talking points in the 10 countries of ASEAN, and the influential travel markets of Asia Pacific and beyond.
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Welcome to the third edition of our Start The Week show; a fast-paced ride through the hottest 5 travel topics in South East Asia and beyond. This week, Gary and Hannah take a sharp intake of breath as Thailand raises an alert for the deadly Nipah Virus. We also discuss 13 intriguing new city pairs for Changi Airport (with China a key focus), and a new tourism tax in Raja Ampat. Plus, we look at how the Philippines is trying to tap into the lengthy visa-processing wait for its citizens wishing to visit Japan, a new hotel art programme in Singapore, and the Red Lotus Lake social media furore around a Was-it-Wasn't-it-AI-Generated? image of Blackpink's Lalisa, Thailand's tourism ambassador. Very 'Zeitgeist 2026'!
All this - and some top talking points to watch for over the next 7 days - in just 15 minutes.
Welcome to the second edition of our new Start The Week show - a fast-paced summary of the hottest 5 travel topics in South East Asia and beyond. This week’s show has a strong Chinese influence – a theme we expect to intensify through 2026. Gary and Hannah summarise the outlook for Trip.com’s South East Asia expansion as it faces an antitrust investigation in China. In a week of tragic accidents in Thailand and Indonesia, high-speed rail construction and air passenger safety are in the spotlight. Plus, why has the Philippines finally decided to introduce visa-free entry for Chinese tourists? Is AirAsia’s protracted restructure nearing completion - and what does it mean for air travel in the region? And, with the announcement of the BTS World Tour dates, why is Singapore “rubbing its hands with glee”? All this and more in 15 minutes…
In 2025, The South East Asia Travel Show was downloaded in more countries than ever before. Listeners logged in across the globe, from Albania to Liberia and Micronesia to Venezuela. But which were our Top 20 listener markets in 2025? During the year, we produced 43 editions of the show, but which were the 5 most-downloaded shows? And which country is the subject of 2 of our Top 5 shows, and what does that tell us about the direction of travel through 2025 and into 2026? Join Hannah and Gary on a whistle-stop rewind tour through the key topics and themes that we covered last year. We also discuss why 2025 was a Year of Recalibration, Realignment and Readjustment and, ultimately, a Year of Unanswered Questions.
Welcome to the debut edition of our new Start The Week show - a succinct 15-minute summary of the hottest 5 travel topics in South East Asia and beyond. Our first mini show takes Gary and Hannah from Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand to China and Saudi Arabia. En route, we discuss a potential Disney theme park in eastern Thailand, Chinese cruise tourism, e-gate tech challenges between Singapore and Malaysia, cross-border EV charging packages, and the logistics of developing a Hajj village for almost a quarter of a million Indonesian pilgrims. All this and more in less than 15 minutes...
If 2025 heralded a new Age of Uncertainty across global political landscapes and economic sectors, what does 2026 hold in store for South East Asia and the broader Asia Pacific region? And how will the myriad risks and uncertainties that emerged last year influence travel and tourism patterns in 2026? Was 2025 the end of days for many post-pandemic travel 'trends'? And what vital lessons did 2025 teach us for the rest of the decade? To kickstart 2026, Gary and Hannah analyse 12 topics, themes and developments that we think will shape travel economies in the 11 nations of ASEAN, plus India, China and Japan. No spoilers, but our broad-ranging discussion journeys from travel infrastructure investment to human-engineered tourism, and the fight for regulated (alternative) accommodation to the AI challenges that the travel industry is failing to confront. Plus, which two countries, one in South East Asia and one in North East Asia, do we expect to dominate the regional discourse in 2026 - and why? All this and much more as we preview a year that is harder than most to predict!
"I was at a tourism conference in Hangzhou in 2018, where Chinese companies showed how they were using AI to personalise travel for users. That's nearly eight years ago." In 2025, AI became a strategic commercial tool in all sectors, including travel and tourism. But it isn't widely understood just how effectively embedded AI already is in China's tourism sector, and how far ahead its leading players are to much of the world. On the final show of 2015, Gary welcomes back Joao Romao, Associate Professor at Yasuda Women’s University in Japan, to debate the shifting Geopolitics of Travel in Asia six years after the first cases of Covid-19 were discovered in Wuhan, China. Joao is the author of Economic Geography of Tourism, which places contemporary tourism in the context of global economic, technological, societal, environmental and political challenges. We discuss the evolving AI-in-travel landscape and the multiplicity of post-Covid variables shaping travel decision making. We analyse how Covid savaged the value of the Yen leading to a surge of inbound tourism, while making outbound travel expensive from Japan. And we dive into the implications for regional travel of icy bilateral relations between China-Japan. Plus, we look at the Middle East's investment-driven approach to tourism growth, and how this might impact South East Asian destinations in future. Meanwhile, what is the Circuit of Proximity, and why does it matter? And what did governments across Asia learn about their travel economies during the Covid shutdowns - and are those learnings are being effectively applied six years later?
So, another year is almost over - but what did we learn in 2025, South East Asia's third full year of travel since the Covid pandemic? This week, Gary and Hannah delve through the archives to take stock of an eventful 12 months for travel and tourism in South East Asia and the broader Asia Pacific region. We journey from the regional turmoil of Trump's tariffs to the tourism impacts of scam centres, and from Singapore setting the standard on SAF to Timor Leste becoming ASEAN's 11th member. Plus, we ask what happened to the ASEAN Tourism Visa, and question why the Philippines is pushing to promote ASEAN as a single destination. We discuss India's secondary city tourism wave, and look at which countries made new visa-free access moves throughout the year. And we gaze into a crystal ball to foretell whether Thailand and Cambodia might make peace and reopen their borders any time soon. Finally, we delve into Vietnam's remarkable breakout year after an initially slow post-Covid recovery - and its reluctance to offer visa-free access to Chinese tourists.
With one month remaining of 2025, airports are getting busy across South East Asia as the year-end travel season swings into gear. And November was another month filled with intriguing talking points to break down. We begin by discussing the long-term societal, political and travel impacts of heavy flooding in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. We take to the skies to address whether AirAsia might enter Vietnam via a stake share in Vietravel Airlines, and ponder the science fiction elements of new Biometric Corridors to verify traveller identities in Indonesia. Moving to China, we calculate which countries in ASEAN are (and aren't) improving their airline seat capacity with China* - and then dive into the complexities of Chinese airlines cancelling flights to Japan, and where that capacity may get redirected in the coming months. Plus, we talk hotel taxes in Malaysia, new charter flights between Brunei and Hainan Island, and the Philippines makes new strides in its play to become a regional player in gastronomy tourism.
[* Click here to access the OAG graph discussed in the show which illustrates China's airline seat capacity with its top 20 air markets for November 2019, 2024 and 2025.]
Will Indonesia build a high-speed railway to Bali? Why Is 19 December a vital date in Vietnam? What is the 'Cosmic Turtle'? When will the first passengers touch down at Long Thanh Airport? And will Thailand's "Three Airports High-Speed Train" ever take to the tracks? This week, Gary welcomes back James Clark, Founder of the Future South East Asia newsletter, to discuss the politics, financing, construction and traveller benefits of 2025's biggest and boldest travel and transport mega-projects across the region. Some of these are newly announced, some are nearing completion, and others remain works in progress. All form part of South East Asia’s ongoing infrastructure build-up to handle enlarged travel capacity in future. The journey takes us by narrow-body planes and bullet trains from North Bali to Phnom Penh, the Malaysia-Singapore border to Bac Ninh province in Vietnam and Bangkok to Borneo. And there's much more to watch out for in 2026!
With less than 50 days remaining of 2025, South East Asia is barrelling towards the end-of-year holiday travel season. And there's plenty of news to talk about. This week, Gary and Hannah zoom through the region’s top travel happenings, with stopovers in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia and Laos, plus China and Bahrain. We begin with downbeat news about the Thailand-Cambodia peace process, and the detrimental impact this is having on Cambodia's visitor economy (remember in 2024, Cambodia was the first country in ASEAN to claim it had surpassed its 2019 visitor level). In a packed show, we also deconstruct COMAC's acquisition of a 49% stake in Lao Airlines and AirAsia's plans to establish a Middle East base in Bahrain. Plus, we look in depth at Singapore's new Sustainable Aviation Fuel Levy, which will charge differentiated rates to air travellers to fund the scaling up of SAF for flights to/from Changi Airport - and how other ASEAN countries might respond. Staying in Singapore, we ponder its newly announced SGD1 billion wellness attraction by the bay, while a social media storm greeted plans to beautify downtown Kuala Lumpur. We finish with an insider summary from Gary of Phocuswright's new 2025 South East Asia Travel Market Essentials report.
After a quiet September, October travel activity was stimulated by various national holidays (including Golden Week in China, Chuseok in South Korea, Diwali/Deepavali in India, Malaysia & Singapore and Undas in the Philippines). These created air travel spikes that set the scene for the region's highly anticipated end-of-year peak season, with destinations making promotional plays to attract each other's holidaymakers. We begin by looking at the accession of Timor Leste to ASEAN and the prospects of a peace settlement between Thailand and Cambodia. We address 2025's biggest regional story, scam centres - and their broadening impacts on tourism sentiment (and policy) as South Korea's government issues a travel ban for parts of Cambodia. Is a pan-Asian summit the only way to effectively tackle this scaling cross-border issue? Plus, we look at Thailand's policy of attracting charter flights from Chinese tier-2 cities, the Philippines restores e-visa access for Chinese tourists and Singapore enacts a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) mandate. Finally, we head to Macau where concerted promotional campaigns to attract visitors from South East Asian nations are garnering results.
After three weeks in Japan, Singapore and Italy, Gary and Hannah are back in KL to recap the top travel talking points from September and early October. China's Mid-Autumn Golden Week has just wrapped up, so we assess the current state of play in a diversifying Chinese outbound market. Elsewhere, we discuss a raft of new Muslim-friendly tourism initiatives being introduced across South East Asia, note a shift towards waterborne transport innovation and crunch the numbers of a tax relief scheme for travel industry workers in Indonesia. Plus, Thailand's THB300 Tourism Tax is being resuscitated (again), and the nation's tourism authority is turning to the diplomatic community as travel influencers. Plus, we delve deeper into AirAsia's potential purchase of COMAC planes, and take a quick layover in Brunei to reflect on the region's smallest visitor economy.
Economic and social processes shape tourism development, but - in turn - tourism reshapes economic spaces, and that is creating new challenges in South East Asia and beyond. This week, Gary welcomes Joao Romao, Associate Professor at Yasuda Women’s University in Japan, to discuss his new book, Economic Geography of Tourism. An economist, tourism strategy advisor and former travel documentary maker, Joao assesses contemporary tourism through a lens of shifting global economic, technological, societal, environmental and political challenges. He advocates for tourism strategies that are economically viable and effectively sustainable, inclusive and resilient - but questions whether these can be achieved in modern political economies. Starting in his home country of Japan, we travel through South East Asia to South America and Europe to discuss the accumulating societal issues confronting tourism planners. We assess the implications of technological advancements on urban and secondary destinations, and the concentration of priceless travel data among a small coterie of tech firms. We finish by looking at how long-term partnerships with creative industries and the wellness sector might forge a more manageable balance of travel flows between cities and decentralised destinations.
As we speed towards the 4th quarter of 2025, some economic metrics in South East Asia are trending towards nervousness. Air travel capacity is a primary case study, where the year-on-year data is mostly positive (look away now, Indonesia), but the ASEAN and APAC regions (overall) are still playing catching from 2019... all those pre-Covid years ago. Plus, on our weekly travel news roundup, Gary and Hannah journey across ASEAN to discuss the top talking points in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines and Timor Leste. En route, we discuss the devastating flooding fallout in Bali, 'brownouts' in Boracay, Koh Samui's controversial mega-bridge and the downbeat news that the Thai-Cambodia border "will not be reopened soon." To salve the sense of gloom, we finish by keeping our fingers crossed that Timor Leste will be admitted as the 11th member of ASEAN - although no-one seems quite sure.
September is historically a slow month for travel news in South East Asia. With the October Golden Week imminent, followed by the peak November-February tourism season, it's usually a period to reflect and prepare. Not this year. Political upheaval and economic instability in ASEAN's two largest economies, Indonesia and Thailand, are front-page news. Events in both nations have the potential to influence the end-of-year travel season, not least in Thailand where an enforced national election is likely. Meantime, Gary and Hannah assess Malaysia's latest positioning statement for its biggest ever 12-month national tourism campaign in 2026. Phnom Penh inaugurates Cambodia's much hyped new Techo Airport. And Vietnam's buoyant tourism economy enjoys a further boost during National Day. Plus, why are consumer trade shows an even bigger deal than normal in 2025 in Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines? All this and more in our weekly travel and tourism news roundup.
Vietnam and South Korea have "visa-easing tricks up their sleeves" as China's October Golden Week nears. And, with two-thirds of 2025 completed, attentions are turning to the peak end-of-year travel season across Asia. That's the backdrop for a frenetic month of travel activity region-wide in August. For our regular monthly round-up, Gary and Hannah travel around ASEAN with stopovers in Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines, plus China and South Korea. Along the way, we discuss Vietnam's new 2025 arrivals target, plus Airbnb's big numbers to argue its economic value across APAC markets. Kuala Lumpur talks airport terminal inter-linkage and Thai Vietjet announces ambitious expansion plans, while the financial costs of the Thailand-Cambodia weigh heavily in both countries. Finally, could senior tour guides in the Philippines herald a new era of engaging mature tourism professionals to service travellers from ageing source markets?
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Indonesia plans to expand its total of international airports by Presidential decree. Thailand fires the regional starting gun for crypto payments in tourism (when will other countries join the race?). Vietnam launches its own 'Superapp' to be rolled out over the next two years. It's been a week of mega-announcements in South East Asia as concerns grow about slowing travel and tourism momentum and looming geo-economic disruptions. Join Gary and Hannah as they travel through ASEAN to discuss the top travel talking points of the past seven days. En route, we look at why Bali's governor says the island doesn't need a casino, and why the Philippines' Minister of Tourism has “nothing but a plastic bullet” to battle other countries for tourists. And finally, why is the free flights giveaway in Thailand proving less popular than hoped for?
“Indonesia has the potential to lead in eco-tourism, in cultural heritage and in Muslim-friendly tourism... but it tries to promote everything all at once, which dilutes the message.” Beautiful, vast and complex, Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelago nation, and home to the planet’s fourth-largest population. But tourism is heavily concentrated in Bali, which recorded 45% of inbound arrivals to Indonesia in 2024. Meanwhile, Indonesia lags behind Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam for visitor arrivals, attracting 13.1 million visitors in 2024, while generating more than 1 billion domestic trips. So why does it underperform for inbound tourism? This week, Gary is joined by Bali-based travel executive Nur Wulan T, who has worked for leading travel-tech players and airlines, including Garuda, Traveloka, Tiket.com and STAAH, and is a speaker on tourism and hospitality topics. We discuss the diverse impacts of Indonesia’s infrastructure deficit and high domestic airfares. Plus, we asses the mixed progress of the 5 Super Priority Destinations - Lake Toba, Borobudur, Labuan Bajo, Mandalika and Likupang - and Bali's long-touted second airport. Wulan also explains the untapped potential of Sumba and Papua, the lessons to be learned from other Asian countries that are pushing creative boundaries in Muslim tourism, and areas for improvement in destination marketing.
Vietnam's inbound tourism boom in 2025 continues. Malaysia targets tourism to reach 16% of GDP. India and the Philippines talk "free visas". THAI Airways confirms its post-Covid comeback by returning to the stock market. Boracay "streamlines" its various entry fees" And Singapore celebrate its 60th birthday since independence. It’s been a pretty hectic news week across South East Asia. Join Gary and Hannah as they travel through ASEAN to discuss the top travel and tourism talking points of the past seven days.
July was a challenging month for travel and tourism in South East Asia. A military conflict between Thailand and Cambodia shook the region. New 'reciprocal' US tariff rates will challenge bottom lines and business travel budgets for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, mixed results continue for visitor arrivals, consumer spending and travel sentiment. This month's Top 10 Travel Talking Points round-up takes Gary and Hannah from Malaysia to Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines and, inevitably given the global geo-economic situation, Washington DC. En route we discuss the potential implications of the Thailand-Cambodia War, the new US tariff rates and the Asian Development Bank's gloomy GDP forecasts for the region. Plus, we assess the latest visitor arrivals statistics - and Malaysia's controversial new accounting method - look at Singapore's tourism partnership with OpenAI, Hotel 101's lacklustre IPO in New York, and further delays for Thailand's casino resort legislation and tourism tax And, we finish on a positive note with the newly inscribed UNESCO World Heritage Sites across South East Asia.
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