The South East Asia Travel Show

"This is a South East Asian festival. It will be a mouthpiece for us to develop the vocabulary that surrounds South East Asian cooking, food culture and, moving forward, South East Asian restaurants." This week, Gary is joined by Leisa Tyler and Darren Teoh, co-founders of the Kita Food Festival - which this year celebrates its third anniversary in Malaysia and Singapore. Leisa is a Malaysia-based food and travel journalist and founder of Weeds&More, which supplies heirloom produce to hotels and restaurants. Darren is Head Chef of one-Michelin starred Dewakan restaurant in Kuala Lumpur.  The festival takes place in four destinations, Kuching, Penang, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, from 27 September-30 October. It brings together innovative chefs in each city with counterparts from around the region. It also provides a platform to discuss key issues, such as biodiversity, carbon impact, food security and managing waste. Leisa and Darren discuss the highlights of this year's festival, plans for future expansion and nurturing the next generation of chefs in the region. Plus, we tackle key hospitality issues, such as ingredient sourcing, innovation and the growing Michelin star influence on food tourism and dining in Asia. Is it a help or a hindrance to developing sustainable culinary scenes representing place and culture?
 
 

South East Asia is abuzz with talk of Tourism Taylornomics as Singapore prepares for the billion-dollar Eras Tour to arrive. Coldplay are also headed to the region, Blackpink are filling soccer stadiums and fans await news of Beyonce's 2024 tour destinations. Pop Music Tourism is the region's breakout story of 2023. The economic windfall for airlines, hotels and tours and experiences players is enormous - as is the boost for destination branding. After Blackpink's recent Hanoi shows, a city official sent the band a letter to thank them for enhancing the capital's image "as a peaceful, safe and friendly destination". Meanwhile, The Weeknd is producing a Halloween-themed musical show in Singapore, and scores of K-pop bands are escaping the shadow of BTS to draw large crowds. Plus, we discuss a jazz festival in Jakarta (with stages sponsored by a hotel group and a tourism board), performances by Indian stars in KL - and the social media fallout when things go wrong, as recently happened with The 1975's festival performance in Malaysia. And we take a quick tour to North East Asia, where festivals in Japan, China, South Korea and Taiwan are drawing huge crowds of concertgoers from home and abroad. 

July, the seventh month of 2023, proved another busy period along South East Asia’s road to a travel and tourism recovery. This week, Hannah and Gary chat through the Top 8 travel talking points in July. The journey unwinds from Thailand to Singapore, Bali to Kuala Lumpur, Japan to Cambodia and China to Saudi Arabia. We discuss the half-year arrivals in each country, the Top 10 airlines in the region and the three nations comprising almost two-thirds of South East Asia's total airline capacity. We look at the variance on the new Henley Passport Index, which revealed a large spectrum from Singapore (ranked #1 worldwide) and Myanmar (#90). Plus, what's the travel outlook for China's October Golden Week? Should all countries develop a 'Saudi Arabia Strategy' for inbound and outbound travel? And what factors are shaping Thailand's 'Tourism Deficit' with Japan?

"We are hitting milestone after milestone at the moment." It's exactly three years since Maldives became one of the first countries in Asia Pacific to reopen for tourism during the pandemic. This week, Gary and Hannah welcome Thoyyib Mohamed, Managing Director of Visit Maldives, to discuss the challenges of the reopening process, and a successful three years since. In 2020, Maldives enticed a creditable 555,000 visitors to its resorts and beaches despite widespread global disruption. This year, the Indian Ocean archipelago nation is on target for a record 1.9 million visitors. We discuss the key inbound markets and shifts in visitor expectations and booking trends since 2020. Growth also brings new challenges. Thoyyib talks us through the new 5th Tourism Master Plan, which tackles diverse issues, ranging from climate impact to energy security, food waste and community development. He also explains the sustainable initiatives underway in one of the lowest lying nations on earth, and the need for global action on climate and ocean pollution. Plus, we chat about one of the lesser known aspects of travel to the Maldives: guest house tourism.

Thailand. China, India & Russia. Visa Backlogs. Indonesia's Air Sector. A Short-Term Rental Ban. Taylor Swift & Coldplay. High-Speed Rail. Love the Philippines. What connects the dots? All feature in our round-up of South East Asia's Top 10 talking points from the first half of 2023. As the region moves on from its first full half year of travel since 2019, Gary and Hannah discuss the key issues and vital takeaways. Plus, we forecast some of the hot issues to watch in the second half of the year. Will we see a slowdown in intra-regional pent up travel demand? Will Chinese tourists stream into South East Asia in larger numbers? Can regional airports cope if they do? Will long-haul air fares stay as high as they are right now? How will depreciating currencies impact inbound and outbound travel? And should we finally cast off the shadow of the "return to 2029 levels" recovery benchmark?

What is a SuperApp, and why should the travel industry care about them? There are numerous reasons to care, as Gary and Hannah discuss this week with Jakarta-based Brett Henry, President & Director of MG Group. Brett guides us through a research-based definition of SuperApp characteristics, and explains the opportunities and challenges they provide for brands and travellers. En route, we discuss a bunch of SuperApps in ASEAN, including GoTo, Grab, WeChat, Meituan and Shopee. We also touch on AirAsia's SuperApp progress and ask "Is TikTok the next SuperApp in South East Asia?" (Spoiler alert: Absolutely). Plus, we discuss the hyper-localisation in each market to meet changing consumer needs, the region’s complex e-payments landscape and the economics of distributing travel through SuperApps. And, where do home-grown SuperApps go in future? Will they develop their own travel inventories and further monetise their tourism presence? And is there an accelerating urgency for travel sellers to become engaged participants in SupeApp platforms?

“Airports are making changes in their operation plans and strategies to adapt and inculcate the learnings of the last two years.” The airport sector continues to undergo a transformation as traffic flows recover, intelligent technology adoption accelerates and consumer expectations shift. This week, Gary and Hannah welcome KL-based Shantanu Gangakhedkar, Senior Consultant for Aerospace & Defence with Frost & Sullivan. Shantanu has authored a new White Paper entitled "Future of Airports and Growth Opportunities: Sustainability & Digitization". In a broad-ranging chat, we discuss the air travel recovery in South East Asia and Asia Pacific in the first half of 2023, and the outlook for the rest of the year. We go behind the scenes at the region's airports to discuss the developing trends in F&B (including in-airport food deliveries), duty free retail, biometric applications and baggage handling technology. Shantanu also covers the steps airport operators are taking to achieve net-zero targets. Plus, we assess the outlook for smaller and regional airports in this unfolding new era in travel.

"Indonesia's domestic market is underpinning the growth of tourism." This is little surprise. The world's fourth-largest population is expected to generate 1.4 billion domestic trips in 2023. In addition, a "demographic dividend," whereby a youthful population is driving economic growth will support expansion of tourism and hospitality through the 2020s. This week, Gary and Hannah assess the travel outlook in South East Asia's largest country with Jakarta-based Ross Woods, an experienced hotel investment and strategy consultant. Ross discusses the recovery of different hotel segments over the past 12 months across the Indonesian archipelago, and the hotel development pipeline. We also look at the international air travel sector, which remains dominated by Jakarta and Bali, and the prospects for inbound and outbound flight growth in regional airports. Plus, we look at the current status of the Five Priority Destinations project to develop different regions of the country for tourism and reduce the visitor economy's reliance on Bali. And we look at the short-term rentals sector. Is there any chance Bali could replicate the decision of Penang in Malaysia to ban STRs in residential buildings?