Ep 246: Indonesia's Inbound, Outbound & Domestic Travel Outlook, with Pauline Suharno, ASTINDO

About This Episode

3 Apr 2025 • 39m15s

“It’s cheaper to fly from Jakarta to KL, Bangkok or even Japan than to Manado.” Indonesia is South East Asia’s largest country and largest economy, and has a fascinating, fast-changing travel landscape. This week, Hannah welcomes back to the show Jakarta-based Pauline Suharno, President of ASTINDO, the Indonesian travel agents association, to assess the outlook for travel and tourism. Pauline discusses the progress of a new Indonesia Tourism Board, and a range of new train tourism packages.

She also addresses the impacts of government budget cuts on hotels and travel businesses in second-tier cities. Outbound travel is flourishing despite a weak rupiah and visa hurdles to jump, but where are the hot destinations for Indonesian tourists?

Plus, what is the “McDonalds of travel”, will new airlines get off the ground, and why are domestic airfares so expensive?

View All Episodes

Latest Episodes Catch up with the pods you may have missed

Play
13 Nov 2025 • 31m53s

Ep 273: Singapore Leads on SAF, Cambodia Visitor Numbers Dive & A Bahrain Base for AirAsia?: The Latest South East Asia Travel News in Review

With less than 50 days remaining of 2025, South East Asia is barrelling towards the end-of-year holiday travel season. And there’s plenty of news to talk about. This week, Gary and Hannah zoom through the region’s top travel happenings, with stopovers in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia and Laos, plus China and Bahrain. We begin with downbeat news about the Thailand-Cambodia peace process, and the detrimental impact this is having on Cambodia’s visitor economy (remember in 2024, Cambodia was the first country in ASEAN to claim it had surpassed its 2019 visitor level).
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.