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

Listen to this episode

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Podbean

View All Episodes

About This Episode

16 Jan 2025 • 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

Vietnam,
Singapore,
Cambodia,
Indonesia,
The Philippines,
Malaysia,
Back to Vietnam, and
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.

« Next Episode Ep 237: South East Asia's Top 8 Pre-Lunar New Year Travel & Tourism Talking Points: January 2025 in Review Previous Episode » Ep 235: South East Asia's 15 Travel & Tourism Hot Topics to Watch in 2025

View All Episodes

Latest Episodes Catch up with the pods you may have missed

Play

30 Oct 2025 • 26m28s

Ep 272: Scam Centre Tourism Impacts, SAF Mandates, Q4 Travel Promotions & Timor Leste Joins ASEAN: October 2025 in Review

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.

Play

10 Oct 2025 • 34m24s

Ep 271: Chinese Holidaymakers Jet Off, Multiple Muslim Tourism Initiatives & Fiscal Relief for Travel Workers: September + Golden Week in Review

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.

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

About This Episode

Latest Episodes Catch up with the pods you may have missed

Ep 272: Scam Centre Tourism Impacts, SAF Mandates, Q4 Travel Promotions & Timor Leste Joins ASEAN: October 2025 in Review

Ep 271: Chinese Holidaymakers Jet Off, Multiple Muslim Tourism Initiatives & Fiscal Relief for Travel Workers: September + Golden Week in Review

Hannah Pearson

Gary Bowerman