The Travel Industry Podcast for ASEAN and Asia Pacific...

Where will Chinese tourists head for the longest Spring Festival holiday in history? How will regional travel hold up for the Lunar New Year break? And will the close proximity of the LNY and the Eid holiday seasons influence travel patterns in parts of South East Asia? On our fast-paced Start The Week show, Gary and Hannah stop over in,Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, China, Bahrain, London & Amsterdam in search of the answers to travel’s big questions.

It’s a BIG week for tourism policy across Asia. On our fast-paced Start The Week show, Gary and Hannah stop over in Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines and Japan. Elections in Thailand and Japan returned the two interim Prime Ministers with clear mandates. What will this mean for Thailand’s attempts to stem its inbound decline? And will fiscal expansionism further weaken the Japanese Yen? And what about repairing relations between China & Japan and Cambodia & Thailand?

January disappeared in a flash - and what a crazy month it was worldwide. Here in South East Asia, an intriguing slate of talking points emerged to set up the 2026 travel year - and Lunar New Year is just around the corner. As we do every month, Gary and Hannah recap January’s top 8 takeaways from across ASEAN and beyond with stopovers in Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Laos, Thailand… and Russia.

In the fourth edition of our Start The Week show; a fast-paced ride through the hottest travel topics in South East Asia and beyond, Gary and Hannah land in Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia Myanmar, Japan and China. En route, we deconstruct the key points of ASEAN’s 2026-2030 Tourism Blueprint, look at why the IMF/World Bank annual summit is headed to Bangkok, and get ready to buy our Shanghai flight tickets with China’s visa-free travel scheme extended to UK citizens.