5 things to expect in the Southeast Asia travel market by 2025

Southeast Asia is embarking on the road to recovery after a damaging travel hiatus. The pandemic abruptly discontinued a decade of travel growth and catalyzed economic regression.

According to Phocuswright’s latest travel research report Southeast Asia Travel Market Report 2021-2025, Thailand and Singapore commenced a restricted reboot of international travel in the final quarter of 2021, but only in the second quarter of 2022 did unhindered travel return regionwide.

Inbound and outbound travel are gaining momentum, while domestic tourism continues to underpin the air travel revival in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Singapore's global air connectivity is regaining scale, and will be enhanced as the key Northeast Asian markets of Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and hopefully China, ramp up international flight services.  

Full-service and low-cost carriers are restoring flight routes and frequencies, plus new services from primary and secondary airports. Hotel pipelines are strong, and domestic tourism activity remains buoyant in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Here are 5 things to expect in the Southeast Asia travel market by 2025: 

• Gross bookings in Southeast Asia will reach 94% of the record 2019 level. 
• Digital transformation will continue to accelerate rapidly across Southeast Asia, with online bookings more than doubling between 2022 and 2025. 
• Eager to embrace all forms of mobile commerce, the region will see mobile gross bookings double its 2019 numbers. 
• Highly anticipated new rail services in Indonesia and Thailand will drive ridership growth, with OTAs forecast to be the key beneficiary of expanded mobile ticketing.  
• Uncertainty about the return of Chinese tourists will continue to hurt Thailand most in Southeast Asia.

A combined 2022 arrivals forecast of around 30 million for the four nations of Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia is small in comparison to 2019. However, it would provide a platform to build upon in 2023 and beyond.