The South East Asia Travel Show

Golf and casino tourism were booming across South East Asia and Asia Pacific before the pandemic - but both sectors face an uncertain future. This week, Gary and Hannah chat with Bill Healey, a hospitality, golf and casino tourism expert who has lived and worked in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Phnom Penh and Bali. Bill was developing an Asian golf trip booking app in Cambodia before the pandemic struck, and returned to the US expecting to return within a few months. In this fascinating chat, Bill reflects on the growth trajectories of golf and casino tourism in the region over recent years, and the various challenges being faced now and potential opportunities in future. We also talk about vaccine passports, contactless hotel services and revenue management applications. And with Bill currently being based in Las Vegas, we get his take on how casino tourism is recovering along the world-famous Vegas Strip.

Will Bali reopen for inbound tourism next month? This week, Gary and Hannah are delighted to welcome back Stuart McDonald, Bali-based founder of Travelfish, to talk all things travel and tourism in Bali and beyond. Bali originally planned to reopen to international tourists last September, but that was postponed. It’s now aiming for July 2021, but will it happen? Much relies on two things, getting sufficient residents vaccinated and finding inbound markets that will permit their citizens to visit Bali. Stuart discusses how COVID-19 has impacted travel businesses and daily life around Bali, the outlook for domestic tourism and the current economic situation in Bali and Indonesia. He also addresses the ‘Digital Nomad Visa’ and ‘Work From Bali’ proposals, potential competition for visitors with Phuket and media articles about the behaviour of foreign visitors in Bali's beach towns. We also assess the challenges for reopening tourism elsewhere in South East Asia, such as Singapore, Cambodia and Laos, and the prospect of tourism adopting a more sustainable stance in future.

When is travel going to restart? And is South East Asia actually going backwards? While Bali and Phuket seem steadfast in their desire to reopen their borders to vaccinated visitors in July, much of the region continues to struggle to contain resurgent waves of COVID-19. Travel at the moment, in some countries, appears a lower priority than it did two or three months ago. Against this backdrop, governments know that competition to attract travellers will intensify in the near future and no country wants to get left behind. So, this week, Gary and Hannah discuss 6 key reasons for the slow national and regional progress in rebooting travel and tourism. En route, we ask and answer the following questions: Will Singapore's recent tribulations have knock-on effects in the region? Is this the end of the line for Travel Bubbles? What is being done to speed up vaccine programmes? Is travel for the foreseeable future only likely in decentralised destinations, like islands? And which countries might reach a 70% vaccination threshold in 2021?
 

This week, Gary and Hannah chat with Charlotte Louwman-Vogels, CEO of Fair Tourism, a non-profit foundation based in the Netherlands that does commendable community-based tourism (CBT) work in Thailand. During this intriguing chat, Charlotte discusses how she assisted the Kayan tribe in Huay Pu Keng to transition from being a commercial show village into a self-sustaining tourism community managed by the locals themselves. She discusses the role that tour operators and DMCs can play to support and promote sustainable tourism so that it empowers rather than exploits local communities, and how Fair Tourism is working with university students in destinations ranging from Australia to Kenya and Jordan. Charlotte also addresses the emerging challenges for CBT during the pandemic and beyond, and the role young people can play in making transformational tourism more meaningful for hosts and visitors.

"Vietnam was really hot in 2019," says Sydney-based Kerry Newsome, Australian Manager of ITS Vietnam and host of the What About Vietnam podcast. Kerry supports Australian travel agents wanting to sell tours to Vietnam, and accompanies travel groups in Vietnam. She was in the country right before the closure of borders in March 2020 working to help Australian tourists return home before COVID-19 lockdowns took hold. In this fascinating interview, she tells Gary and Hannah about her passion for the landscapes, cuisines and cultures of Vietnam, and how adventurous Australians were increasingly eager to experience more of the country. Kerry also discusses how her company ITS Vietnam has adapted to the pandemic era, the prospects for Vietnam reopening to international travel and the future outlook for Australian travellers into Vietnam and South East Asia. 

On this week’s show, Gary and Hannah take a break from Travel Bubbles, PCR Tests and Reopening Strategies. Instead, the show builds a virtual guide of all the travel resources that we read, watch and listen to when researching the show, and producing our own weekly reports. The South East Asia Travel Show Resources Guide surveys the information, media and data landscape, and discusses how it’s developed and diversified since COVID-19 took hold. The multimedia mix extends from travel webinars, podcasts and weekly and monthly reports to newspaper websites, vaccine trackers, airline and and hotel dashboards and COVID-19 infection aggregators. Plus, some of the very best e-newsletters that have emerged in recent months by local writers in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Bali.

With the COVID-19 pandemic now in its 14th month, what have we learned and how will those lessons be – or not be – applied in future? This week, Gary and Hannah take on some of the ‘big picture’ talking points in travel and tourism in ASEAN. The show asks, and tries to answer, 7 critical questions: 1) What do travel and tourism mean today, and do we have a different outlook than before the pandemic? 2) What have been the biggest changes for the travel industry - which will be temporary, and will any be permanent? 3) What has been the most overlooked development so far? 4) What have we learned in the first 4 months of 2021, and is the current outlook different than expected at the end of 2020? 5) Are travel bubbles relevant any more now that we have vaccines? 6) Realistically, what are the expectations for travel and tourism in South East Asia in 2021 - and will there be a noticeable ‘turning point’? 7) Looking further ahead, what are the reasons to be optimistic, and what are the pessimistic factors?

This week marks the start of the two-way travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand. So there's no better time for Gary and Hannah to welcome back Simon Westaway, Executive Director of the Australian Tourism Industry Council, to the show. Back in December, Simon accurately predicted April for the two-way travel bubble getting started. In a fascinating discussion, we look at how Australia's domestic tourism sector has recovered, and trends have shifted. These include more travel within home states, and a surge in self-drive trips. Meanwhile, some regions of the country have never had it so good. Plus, the outlook for travel between Australia and New Zealand as the winter sports season beckons, and some of the new routes that airlines are introducing. Beyond the bubble, are South Pacific islands next on the itinerary, and will Australia push ahead with a much-touted travel corridor with Singapore? And how about Vietnam? Finally, what's the outlook for long-haul international travel in 2021, or more likely 2022?