Ep 277: The Geopolitics of Travel & Tourism in ASEAN, Asia Pacific & Beyond in the Era of AI

“I was at a tourism conference in Hangzhou in 2018, where Chinese companies showed how they were using AI to personalise travel for users. That’s nearly eight years ago.” In 2025, AI became a strategic commercial tool in all sectors, including travel and tourism. But it isn’t widely understood just how effectively embedded AI already is in China’s tourism sector, and how far ahead its leading players are to much of the world. On the final show of 2015, Gary welcomes back Joao Romao, Associate Professor at Yasuda Women’s University in Japan, to debate the shifting Geopolitics of Travel in Asia six years after the first cases of Covid-19 were discovered in Wuhan, China. Joao is the author of Economic Geography of Tourism, which places contemporary tourism in the context of global economic, technological, societal, environmental and political challenges. We discuss the evolving AI-in-travel landscape and the multiplicity of post-Covid variables shaping travel decision making. We analyse how Covid savaged the value of the Yen leading to a surge of inbound tourism, while making outbound travel expensive from Japan. And we dive into the implications for regional travel of icy bilateral relations between China-Japan. Plus, we look at the Middle East’s investment-driven approach to tourism growth, and how this might impact South East Asian destinations in future. Meanwhile, what is the Circuit of Proximity, and why does it matter? And what did governments across Asia learn about their travel economies during the Covid shutdowns - and are those learnings are being effectively applied six years later?