Ep 236: South East Asia's Top 8 Travel Mega-Projects in 2025, with James Clark, Future South East Asia

About This Episode

16 Jan 2025 β€’ 34m48s

Wherever you find yourself in South East Asia, it’s impossible to miss that travel infrastructure is being built out on a vast scale – and 2025 is an important year for some major projects.

This week, Gary chats with James Clark, Founder of the Future South East Asia newsletter, to assess the Top 8 Mega-Projects under-development across the region.

In order, we discuss these transformative airport and high-speed rail projects in

  1. Vietnam,
  2. Singapore,
  3. Cambodia,
  4. Indonesia,
  5. The Philippines,
  6. Malaysia,
  7. Back to Vietnam, and
  8. Thailand.

We analyse the potential impact on travel and tourism, plus the economics and politics, and the financing, planning and construction challenges, behind each one. With South East Asia at the centre of Asia Pacific’s ambitious economic growth trajectory, these mega-projects will carve out new contexts for domestic and international travel.

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