If 2025 heralded a new Age of Uncertainty across global political landscapes and economic sectors, what does 2026 hold in store for South East Asia and the broader Asia Pacific region? And how will the myriad risks and uncertainties that emerged last year influence travel and tourism patterns in 2026? Was 2025 the end of days for many post-pandemic travel 'trends'? And what vital lessons did 2025 teach us for the rest of the decade? To kickstart 2026, Gary and Hannah analyse 12 topics, themes and developments that we think will shape travel economies in the 11 nations of ASEAN, plus India, China and Japan. No spoilers, but our broad-ranging discussion journeys from travel infrastructure investment to human-engineered tourism, and the fight for regulated (alternative) accommodation to the AI challenges that the travel industry is failing to confront. Plus, which two countries, one in South East Asia and one in North East Asia, do we expect to dominate the regional discourse in 2026 - and why? All this and much more as we preview a year that is harder than most to predict!

"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?

So, another year is almost over - but what did we learn in 2025, South East Asia's third full year of travel since the Covid pandemic? This week, Gary and Hannah delve through the archives to take stock of an eventful 12 months for travel and tourism in South East Asia and the broader Asia Pacific region. We journey from the regional turmoil of Trump's tariffs to the tourism impacts of scam centres, and from Singapore setting the standard on SAF to Timor Leste becoming ASEAN's 11th member. Plus, we ask what happened to the ASEAN Tourism Visa, and question why the Philippines is pushing to promote ASEAN as a single destination. We discuss India's secondary city tourism wave, and look at which countries made new visa-free access moves throughout the year. And we gaze into a crystal ball to foretell whether Thailand and Cambodia might make peace and reopen their borders any time soon. Finally, we delve into Vietnam's remarkable breakout year after an initially slow post-Covid recovery - and its reluctance to offer visa-free access to Chinese tourists.