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L-R: Gary Bowerman, Director, High-Yield Tourism; Patee Sarasin, CEO, Really Cool Airlines; Deepshikha Sehgal, Head of LGS (Lodging, Ground & Sea) – APAC, Sabre Corporation and Marga Manlapig, Editor, Travel Daily Media
At the recently held TDM C-Suite Travel Trade Global Summit 2025, at Montien Hotel Surawong Bangkok, Thailand, there was an engaging panel discussion on the topic ‘Rethinking the ASEAN & APAC Travel Markets in 2025 and Beyond”
Moderated by Gary Bowerman, Director, High-Yield Tourism, panelists included Patee Sarasin, CEO, Really Cool Airlines; Deepshikha Sehgal, Head of LGS (Lodging, Ground & Sea) – APAC, Sabre Corporation and our Editor at Travel Daily Media, Marga Manlapig. In the first part of the article, we dwell on Q1 travel results, airline source crunch, India, China outbound markets and more….
Catering to the ‘silver hairs’
Keeping in mind the demographics of future travellers within APAC, Bowerman started by saying: “We do live in a region of ageing populations, some of our key visitor markets, China, Singapore, Japan, South Korea are ageing, and China has more than 100 million active silver travellers. People are over 50 years.”
Post Covid the recovery for travel has been Asia Pacific for Asia Pacific
We have already seen that Asian travellers have reignited and revitalised travelling and tourism in our region, whether that’s for business, leisure or MICE. Sharing statistics, he said: “In Southeast Asia in April, there was 16.9 million outbound flight seats, 39 % of those were to destinations in Southeast Asia, 49% were destinations in the rest of Asia Pacific. So, 87% of the international flight seats from Southeast Asia, were to within the APAC region the next market after that was the Middle East, which was 7%.
Bowerman stated that 2023 and 2024 were strong for rebound recovery growth markets across the region. However, the first quarter was slightly mixed in this region.
Q1 growth across hotel chains in APAC
Elaborating on the same Deepshikha Sehgal said: “In the last couple of days, a lot of global hotel chains have released their Q1 results, and it’s all put looking positive. The growth is driven by this region, Asia Pacific, and when you’re looking at that RevPAR growth, what’s exciting about that is it’s not just rate driven. It’s driven by both occupancy, as well as rate. So, for instance, Japan has grown I think around 4% in occupancy, the rate has grown by about more than 15%. Vietnam has grown around 5% in occupancy and nearly 10% in rate, so that RevPAR growth is sustained and balanced. It’s not like in 2023 and 2024 where there were the spurs of this pent-up demand it seems more balanced, the only city where there is a decline in rate is Singapore. There is a reason for that, let’s not forget about the Taylor Swift effect last year, so you know, when you compare a quarter one from last year compared with this quarter, you will see that impact the rate dipping. If I talk about the corporate side of things, it’s looking very strong, especially for APAC.”
Thailand and Southeast Asia is the magnet for safe travel
On being queried about his startup airlines Patee Sarasin touched on the supply chain. He said: “The key problems that we have is the supply chain of the aircrafts, the maintenance and, we are just being able to finalise our first aircraft after two years. But what you’re going to see is a demand will continue to grow. We are planning to focus on the APAC region. Now with these conflicts and all uncertainty going on globally, Thailand and Southeast Asia seems to be magnet, whether there’s a safe zone. Whereby everyone wants to travel.
Further adding on about the high demand, he said: “The aircraft leasing price has been moving upwards very quickly, especially on white bodies so that this has been a summer crunch, everybody is chasing for an aircraft. Doing airlines at this stage with regards to the opportunities I would say, both logistics and the passenger wise is it’s really in high demand. Prices of air tickets are not cheap as you know, right now. It is going to be quite a good market for the next 3 to 5 years.”
Bowerman queried Marga Manlapig on the region, asking about what has been happening in the first three months of the year 2025.
Revenues are just rolling in Q1, 2025
Sharing projections based on current figures, Marga Manlapig stated that: “The travel market within Southeast Asia alone, is going to be worth around USD 13.28 billion by the end of this year, that’s provided we can sustain the growth of 5.43%, well into 2029. And by that, the market value alone is going to hit 16.41 billion USD by 2029, and if we’re going to be talking about how much value the hospitality sector is getting from individual clients, we’re already looking at 158 dollars and 23 cents per person per day so think about the thousands of travellers within this region. Thailand domestic is already at 15 per cent, Malaysia’s at 10% and let’s not forget places like Indonesia and the Philippines, thanks to Bali and Boracay, you’re seeing a resurgence of people post pandemic, so the revenues are just rolling in in Q1.”
She added: “Also going back to what Deepshika said Singapore is in for a resurgence, because in the second or 3rd Quarter, I think Lady Gaga is exclusively performing in Singapore, that’s the only Asian leg of her world tour, we’re going to be seeing hospitality Jumping up. We’re going to see inbound flights to Singapore, jumping up, and it’s an exciting time for the region.
Bowerman then queried Deepshikha Sehgal on how important did she that the interactions between NE Asia and Southeast Asia across-the-board for leisure, for business for MICE were?
Based in Hng Kong, Sehgal feels that these are critically important. She adds: “Some of the largest economies of the world, our housed in this region, you know, we talk about China. We talk about India; we talk about Japan. They are the largest source markets to the world, and they are the largest source markets through the intra region travel, so you want to give some context. China for 2025 is forecasting to have 115 million international trips.”
Intra-regional growing outbound from India and China
Elaborating on the demographics she stated: “Going outbound from China now, the interesting thing is from that 115 million outbound trips. 68% of the travellers are under the age of 30, and we were just talking about Gen Z, so what’s important here is how we capture that market or how we learn to capture that demographic talking about India, 29 million trips are forecasted for outbound internationally this year, and that number is expected to grow 5 folds By 2040 and actually there is a there is a study that was done, which showed that India, at some point, will surpass the number of international trips more than China by 2040.”
Bowerman reiterated that when we quote 115 million international trips attributed to the Chinese, we must remember around about 50% of that goes to Hong Kong and Macao. Obviously, we chose India and China because they’re the 2 pillow markets and remain important.
‘Domestic’ remains the most important market
“China, we know we had a slow regrowth, since it reopened in 2023. Everyone is for Thailand domestic because of course, your domestic market is your most important market, particularly in a country of 7580 million nightlife, like Thailand. Malaysia for two years for 2022- 2023 was the largest inbound market to Thailand before China engine started to regrow.” Concluded Bowerman
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