The South East Asia Travel Show

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.