After a harmful travel hiatus, Southeast Asia is starting to make progress. A decade of rapid travel expansion was unexpectedly stopped by the epidemic, which also sparked an economic downturn.
Thailand and Singapore started a limited restart of international travel in the final quarter of 2021, but it wasn't until the second quarter of 2022 that unrestricted travel returned to the region as a whole, according to Phocuswright's most recent travel research report Southeast Asia Travel Market Report 2021–2025.
While domestic tourism continues to support the air travel renaissance in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, inbound and outbound travel is picking up speed. As the important Northeast Asian markets of Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and hopefully China ramp up international airline services, Singapore's global air connection is recovering size and will be improved.
Full-service and low-cost airlines are adding new services from both primary and secondary airports while restoring flight paths and frequencies. In Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, there are many open hotel rooms and brisk domestic travel.
By 2025, the travel industry in Southeast Asia can anticipate the following five things:
- Gross bookings in Southeast Asia will surpass 2019's record-breaking level by 94%.
- Southeast Asia will continue to experience a strong acceleration of the digital transformation, with online reservations expected to more than double between 2022 and 2025.
- The region will see a two-fold increase in mobile gross bookings from 2019 to 2020 as it eagerly embraces all types of mobile commerce.
Ridership growth will be fueled by eagerly awaited new rail services in Thailand and Indonesia, with OTAs predicted to be the main gainers from extended mobile ticketing.
- Thailand will continue to suffer the most in Southeast Asia from uncertainty surrounding the return of Chinese tourists.
In comparison to 2019, the combined arrivals predicted for the four countries of Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia in 2022 is just about 30 million. However, it would offer a foundation on which to develop in 2023 and beyond.
Source: PhocusWire.com
