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.

View All Episodes

Latest Episodes Catch up with the pods you may have missed

Play
26 Mar 2026 β€’ 19m16s

Ep 293: A New Survey Report on the Impacts of War in the Middle East on Travel Businesses in South East Asia

“48% of South East Asian travel businesses believe that the prospects for their business in Q2 2026 are worse than they had anticipated at the start of the year.” But, dig deeper and the opinion variances between travel industry players throughout the region are noticeable. On this week’s show Hannah is in the hot seat, as Gary interviews her about a new survey report put together by her team at Pear Anderson and the ASEAN Tourism Association (ASEANTA).
Play
23 Mar 2026 β€’ 19m02s

Ep 292: Eid Travel Trends, Thailand Merges Tourism & Culture & Vientiane's Electric Pole Superstar: Start the Week with The South East Asia Travel Show

Our fast-paced Monday morning Start The Week show is back. This week, Gary and Hannah stop over in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines in search of the answers to South East Asia’s big travel questions. We look at the Eid holiday trends across the region and even into China, and assess an intriguing new flight service connecting Vietnam, Kazakhstan and Czech Republic. Plus, we deconstruct the reasons why Thailand’s government wants to merge the Ministries of Tourism and Culture, and summarise the findings of a new report about the challenges of tourism infrastructure development in the Philippines.