Southeast Asia Travel in 2022 - Predictions and Growth!
they are crucial and this is going to be the only way to really sustain the tourism industry is by this renewed focus on domestic tourism by helping tourism businesses um kind of pivot to serving that market as well as the international market when it comes to like reimagining who that tourist operator is or who's that tourist coming in how much they're going to spend where do they want to see you know it come kind of comes back down to that right and so i think that's that's something that i kind of see as well but that's what tourism boards are going to have to keep doing they have to really be the eyes and ears for tourism stakeholders in the region right now because trends change overnight in china the way of reaching um chinese travelers also changes their preferences their trends what do you see is going to be the biggest factor in the first half [Music] hi i'm andrew tran i help organizations find their strategic purpose and enable them to create amazing custom experiences i've been in the game of marketing and sales for over 15 years across various roles from cutting my teeth on the sales room floor to strategizing and executing truly transformational projects that have made an impact on customers on this show i speak to business professionals from around the world in areas of leadership branding marketing and sales my next guest is hannah pearson she is the director of pearson henson a research and sales representation tourism consultancy specializing in southeast asia and muslim tourism industry originally she's from the uk she's been based in kuala lumpur though in malaysia for the last nine years she's also a co-host on a podcast called southeast asia travel show and on this episode our conversation takes us through into the world of travel and tourism in 2022 from predictions coming into the first half of the new year but also exploring the domestic tourism industry across southeast asia and talking about the importance of china in this region as a tourism inbound source super relevant for companies in the travel tourism industry but also other verticals that target the southeast asia market for their products and services some of the things that we're going to talk about will spark some questions internally for you to think about with your team your group so strap yourselves in grab a cup of coffee pen and pad and listen to hannah and i talk about south east asia travel and tourism so without further ado give it up for hannah pearson hannah what's going on i'm good i'm good thank you very much thanks for having me again uh we're trying to remember when we last spoke but i was saying i feel like it was this year but i think it was actually last year just because it's just pandemic isn't it every day every year it's just blurred into one long period yeah and um you know i think i think between the last time we spoke um and now like uh you've got a new bub which is congratulations well thank you um and you've been doing some great work as well so for anyone who's watching or listening like hannah puts out these like it's like a weekly update on what's happening with covet and it's an amount it's a mountain of work that she does and you should definitely check it out um show notes below check out her profile um and also you've been doing some great stuff as well with your podcast as well but um today i want to talk about like travel with you again but but i got a quick question if if i'm in kl for a week what's three things i must do before i board that flight back that's a good question um so i mean okay the obvious one is go up the patronus towers right i mean that's that's what or at least look at them from the bottom and actually to be honest i've never gone up them that's my that's my my dirty secret about i've been in kl for almost 10 years now and i'm still not going up to the patronus towers i once bought tickets but didn't quite make it up i'm sorry patronus towers of course um food i mean you're in malaysia right it's all about the makkah as you say it's all about eating um so for sure you've got to go check out banana leaf cafes and then mama stalls and have some roti chennai and go catch some and beef rendang go get some kuwaiti there's so many good foods and you know malaysia is just this melting pot of cultures indian chinese malay all thrown in and tons of really good european food too so of course you've got to go eat and the third thing let's maybe just go check out some of the cool cafes and kind of hipsterish places that are coming up but there are some really nice um innovative places to go and hang out um so definitely uh yeah definitely that side too are you a durian fan have you gotten used to it oh no durian's not for me no i can i when i first arrived i used to be even the smell was just oh very intense i can tolerate the smell now i mean i can even just about tolerate the taste but i'm not going out my way to go eat durian yeah there we go you could go you can go eat durian if you're into this your third thing that's the thing like i like growing up i didn't like durian in fact i didn't even like jackfruit growing up and then now i'm a little bit older i'm like oh i can i can get i really like jackfruit and in terms of durian it has to be in like a you know like an ice cube kaching or something like that has to be in this nice kind of cold um coconut yeah so i can tolerate i can kind of tolerate that only in those kind of aspects but yeah no thank you so much all right so anyone who's listening or who's watching when you're going to malaysia even if it's just for a pit stop definitely do check out those things um okay cool so thank you so much for today so i want to talk about like tourism in southeast asia and uh and some of the predictions you're kind of seeing obviously moving into you know we're in 2022 and you know there's quite a lot of things that are going to happen um obviously like you know omnicon um is one thing big o um is is kind of being dominant kind of strain that's that's kind of been talked about like towards the end of 2021 moving into 2022 but you know just really quickly like domestic tourism in the region with the kovan 19 very kind of wreaking havoc all throughout 2021 which has kind of resulted in lockdowns and even more delays and re-opening up on borders how important is that domestic tourism industry going to be for southeast asia nations moving into 2022. that's a great question i mean it is still going to be really crucial um so yes you know towards the end of 2021 we've seen this real buzz around international reopening and this kind of focus i think also from governments and tourism boards on the international market you've seen this gradual um kind of swing back towards the international market but the reality is you know as we've seen towards the end of 2021 um new variants are going to arise inevitably that's going to result in border closures and even if we are in a in a point where international borders are reopened traffic is still not going to be at those levels of 2019 um for many years yet i think the wise bet for tourism businesses tourism boards is to focus on domestic travel and sure domestic tourists are not as high spending which is why um these tourism boards these countries are focusing on international tourists you know they bring in the high yield as opposed to domestic tourists who perhaps they gonna stay with family when they go visit certain places but they are crucial and this is going to be the only way to really sustain the tourism industry is by this renewed focus on domestic tourism by helping tourism businesses um kind of pivot to serving that market as well as the international market um because if they don't you know tourism industry is is in dire straits right now and it needs that that kind of support yeah i mean you're talking about inbound and we're going to talk about china a little bit later as well um just kind of to follow up on that question like you know you were saying like you've got to cater to more more towards that kind of tourism sector do you feel that um like domestically speaking i know it's a little bit different to different southeast asian nations but just generally as a whole do you think domestically the you know the fit like the freedom independent traveler model might work or probably needs a bit more time like when it comes to promoting that domestic travel um i mean i think if we're talking whether domestic travel will be groups or fit certainly it's going to be more fit and just simply because you have that familiarity i think when you're traveling within your own country that you don't necessarily feel like you have to go and travel in a big group unless perhaps there are massive savings um through doing that um plus with covert now you've got this whole do i also want to travel in a big group of people that i don't really know you've got that kind of fear of strangers um but it is there the challenge is really especially if governments are trying to come up with stimulus measures to support the tourism industry is to think about which which sectors amongst the tourism industry really need support um so for example that might actually be aviation because we have seen a lot of um driving holidays right people are very happy to get in the car maybe even drive five six hours to their destination rather than get on a plane so although domestic tourism may be opened and airlines are starting to see that recovery a lot of domestic um routes were also supported by international travelers um you know these international travelers who would transit fly in and then take those flights around the country not only domestic tourists so whatever they come out with they need to be really careful about looking who needs the most help and gearing up stimulus measures and programs to support those industries as well yeah yeah nice and um it kind of moves on to like the next question i was like wanted to ask you around like you know that regional tourism travel industry you know recently there was a paper that mckinsey kind of put out about reimagining tourism in vietnam where they talked about the need for not only getting on with the digital train so you know the digital transformation per se or the touchless and frictionless type of approach um but also reinventing the traveler's experience beyond just accommodation and reimagining government's role which i think you've kind of mentioned the same do you see this same recommendation prescribed to other southeast asian nations as well yeah i think absolutely i mean i think as a whole the whole region does need to become more digitalized and that's something that's definitely been lagging except perhaps in countries like singapore and singapore is always the exception within southeast asia but they have more money so and they're smaller so it's a lot easier for them to do that kind of thing um but certainly digitalization is frictionless travel has to be pushed um and in a way um i'm not saying a pandemic has been good for the tourism industry because obviously it hasn't destroyed the tourism industry but i think that it has challenged industry players about reimagining an experience particularly again when it comes back to domestic travelers so before for domestic travelers maybe accommodation might be the only service that they might take if they're traveling perhaps they need a hotel but maybe they're not going to book a tour guide they might not book a city tour around the place because they feel like they need it um and this i think would hold true for all southeast asian countries um but what the pandemic has shown is that actually there is a way to gear travel experiences around local tourists too and to create unique experiences for them that aren't just accommodation and those are opportunities for revenue that people can take so for example i was at an event a physical event which was revolutionary a few weeks ago i can't remember the last time i went to a physical event and i met a guy who's been running um virtual tours around kampombara so kampung baru is in kl it's like a really local malay kind of part of the city but right in the heart of the city you can see the patronus how it's from there um and he's been running these virtual tours um the international market and that's that's kind of interesting too he's been reimagining that and i think that he's taking those learnings also to the domestic market and trying to educate the local market i think that there are things to see other than the obvious um yeah and yeah i think that is perhaps one of the good only good side that the pandemic has had is that he's really educated travellers to look beyond the obvious attractions um and yeah i think that's applicable whether you're in vietnam or whether you're in malaysia or if you're in cambodia yeah and like for instance like vietnam like and maybe some of the other southeast asian nations where like laos or myanmar where they relied heavily on international tourists but but more like more kind of like importantly but just more kind of segmented the defensive line uh they focused a lot on like the backpacker tourism and you know with the international life with as borders become more open that's kind of predicated on the amount of vaccinations that can occur in like each country you're going to see like the cost um it's going to be just driven back down to the consumer at the end of the day so you know people will have to even though they might spend a month in vietnam they might actually have to tag on next couple of weeks just in case for you know quarantine perspectives that's going to add that's going to drive up more costs so for someone for like a backpacker where you know theoretically they don't spend as much in comparison to say the china market where you know on average like i think in vietnam they spend on average between 800 to 1500 per person which that's quite a lot of money um and so with that in mind it's like well would they need to then kind of change that model and then how do they change it i know some countries have done like australia has done it um about 10 years ago like during the 2010s they recognized that china was going to be the bigger market like the china century was going to happen we're going to have more tourists it was going to replace like the japanese tourists that were coming to australia so you know the tourism australia was really smart about wanting to gear up and digitize their approach and to also help tourist operators kind of linked towards that china mark and that's anything from as simple as a you know a pamphlet like as people come in like having like translated pamphlets to you know having um you know being exposed on various kind of china social media platform so stuff like that i think is is gonna you know like you said it's the whole kind of pandemic has changed uh the way we need to approach certain things or better or worse obviously more for worse but when it comes to like reimagining who that tourist operator is or who's that tourist coming in and how much they're going to spend where do they want to see you know it come kind of comes back down to that right and so i think that's that's something that i kind of see as well but i'm moving on to like something that i kind of mentioned before like around china you know the reason why i'm mentioning china for anyone who's watching this listening is because china represents quite a big you know proportion for a lot of nations when it comes to inbound travel so with china being that like um you know representing the you know the biggest inbound tourism it's not the biggest for a lot of uh southeast asian nations like how do you think tourism bodies and operators will have to do to accommodate this market yeah it's another good question this one because like you say china was pretty much the biggest inbound source market for southeast asia it was really really important and that's why southeast asia tourism in general was hit so hard at the beginning of 2020 perhaps versus other regions in the world because that's where we saw the first cases right have covered and then chinese tourists stopped coming here um perhaps sooner than other places um and this lack of chinese tourists has been it's monumental um it has really really impacted tourism operators and many tourism operators tourism businesses have been geared solely towards the chinese market and so suddenly overnight your whole source market is gone um and right now you know we're still looking at 2022 and some people's best guess is that chinese travelers may only be allowed to do outbound travel maybe towards golden week perhaps september 2022 next year so we're talking another good it could be another six months another nine months before chinese tourists actually return in any significant number to southeast asia um and i guess there's two implications for that so one is you know if you are a tourism business that has been focusing on the chinese market you are going to have to carry on looking elsewhere um and you know pivoting to other markets but on the other side if that has been your focus and you still believe the chinese market is going to be significant which obviously it is going to be right there's a lot of chinese the proximity between china and southeast asia means they will still continue to be a significant source market once they continue to travel the challenge now is keeping up with trends and keeping up with how do you uh how will you still stay relevant to the china market even though chinese travelers can't necessarily visit southeast asia right now and that's really got to be a role that tourism boards play like you said tourism australia was really good at kind of educating the tourism stakeholders on the ground about what the chinese market needs and wants that's what tourism boards are going to have to keep doing they have to really be the eyes and ears for tourism stakeholders in the region right now because trends change overnight in china the way of reaching um chinese travelers also changes their preferences their trends um they've got to be really keen to watch what's going on in china domestically right now and kind of you know draw to the dotted line and say okay well if they want this in china right now perhaps that means you know in nine months time down the line when they are visiting cambodia or lao or myanmar or wherever this is what they're going to be looking for um so this is really the the challenge it's accepting the fact that they're probably not going to come anytime soon but still preparing things behind the scenes and keeping in touch with them so that you're not overlooked when the borders do reopen and the competition is going to be fierce for chinese travelers once those does open yeah and that kind of tagging on to your point like it's going to be fierce because everyone in southeast asia is going to want that chinese dollar or chinese yuan you know into their country right and so countries like vietnam laos where you know typically they probably wouldn't have spent that much money on their tourism campaigns they would have relied heavily on say like say micro influences to possibly help push that and word of mouth like through you know backpacker traveler type of word of mouth i see and i feel that based on my experience and based on you know you know data that these countries will have to invest into their tourism like identity and a lot of them don't have a real identity other than oh it's it's a it's a great place for backpackers you know it's you know find your own adventure but i think when you're trying to be a little bit more sophisticated uh towards a specific market because they can spend more you're gonna and that's agnostic across any country so go beyond china like if we're looking at like americans um you know who are like 45 plus um who you know who want to never really possibly never travel to asia or it's been a while since i've come to asia like they would have had a bigger propensity to spend so therefore they want certain things that you know they don't necessarily want to stay at a backpack or hostile joint they want to stay at a nicer hotel um they've probably got the mic to spend out like a hilton or a five-star type of hotel resort so it's being able to be smart about it and being able to track to attract those type of travelers but in order to do that companies or countries tourism boards will need to spend that money on advisors in order to run those research groups in order to do that and i think you know you would see in my prediction like as we move into 2022 and beyond that there's gonna be a lot more investment for southeast asian nations who rely heavily on inbound tourism as part of their gdp growth uh coming in or you're going to see them pivot into other industries to kind of help balance that gdp growth trajectory moving forward in this region um but uh hannah i wanted to kind of talk to you now that we're in 2022 we're looking ahead um you know like lots of southeastern asia nations have kind of recorded a lower gdp growth throughout 2021 um that's you know for obvious reasons um and through that like there's been some various forecasts but we're also seeing some positive signs as some nations begin to slowly open up inbound um tourism despite you know some of the you know upcoming kind of you know stuff that's happening like with other variants of the virus but what do you see is going to be the biggest factor in the first half of 2022 um great question once again so i mean it's a big question what's going to happen first half 2022 i don't have my crystal ball i wish i did um but um i i do feel like we are on some positive momentum you know i have said you know towards the end of the year omicron variant hits and that momentum that positivity is kind of wavered um but i do feel that the only way is up right we've got to hope that we've got to believe that we've already hit especially in the tourism industry we have really hit rock bottom we have hit even domestic tourism not being open and i think the primary drivers still for tourism as i was saying earlier first half of 2022 is going to be that domestic tourism um and i think we will see hopefully fewer lockdowns at least domestically perhaps they might keep the borders still closed but domestically you know as more and more southeast asian countries reach those higher levels of vaccination and start giving out boosted doses as well that that means that uncertainty for domestic tourism will at least be removed so i think we will see quite a robust demand for domestic tourism and of course the first half of 2022 we've got big public holidays right we have the lunar new year we have things like songkran in thailand coming up in april my new year so all of these are really really big travel periods and of course last year 2021 almost before every single public holiday there was some kind of lockdown in southeast asia so you saw things like songkran being canceled my new year being cancelled tech being cancelled everything um well i think tech went on but the april reunification day a long holiday right that's when the wave researched in vietnam um so all of this combined means that last year we didn't really take advantage of all of these long weekends um i think this year is going to be different i hope that this year is going to be different and that that is what really drives it but of course like you said it's going to very much depend on variance it's going to depend on how do you keep that sustained interest in domestic tourism if that is the only um kind of revenue for tourism because of course once once tourism is permitted you normally see this initial burst of activity you know everybody is rushing to book staycations or go book their travel but how do you keep that going um particularly if like you said the economies have not been doing so well perhaps you've been made unemployed perhaps you have had to take a pay cut um you know your your spending power is probably lower um and you now have this uncertainty you know that this can happen again and i think people still want to build that kind of that safety that safety net um in terms of spend they want to save up their money just in case this thing happens again so that they've got that so perhaps travel is not going to be seen as this you're really necessity um but let's see let's see how that plays out hopefully economies will start to pick up and with that you know consumer confidence that this is not going to happen again and uh covered will be a distant memory but i i do think we uh we're still going to see it having a massive influence throughout the first year next year yeah and you mentioned something really important as well like the the consumer behavior has changed quite a bit and there's the uncertainty so everyone has like financially within one certain now and therefore like the reimagination of what a tourist is going to be about like like domestic or inbound tourists is going to be so so important you know maybe a inbound tourists they're looking at ways you know everyone's talking about mental health um as a big issue uh all across the world and especially in southeast asia like the you know everyone's gonna work from home so that there's that burnout um they're looking ways to get out you know that's why the the rise of staycations locally has has like really picked up uh domestic tourism but you know potentially like there could be a package where by you know hotels resorts where they can pivot and add in your tourism sorry mental health welfare well uh sorry mental health and you know wellness package whereby they're able to kind of you know guide patrons you know for a stay locally but also be able to you know book them through various kind of you know massage or spa treatments or whatever kind of you know wellness type of element to kind of help them improve like you know their mindfulness and stuff like so you know the staycations where it's only for like maybe three days two nights they're able to kind of maximize that so there's activities they can do there's packages or they can also just kind of cater to that kind of freedom independent traveler where they choose they just need an accommodation point which is like a very typical um fit type of element and then they can just kind of create their own uh pathway or their own adventure coming in but that is a really interesting kind of case um and you know some of the stuff that you kind of mentioned as well like coming to 2022 um and beyond that like in the first half i think it's gonna be really really interesting but wrapping up i know where can they find you um thank you so um listeners can find me at pearanderson.com um you can connect with me on linkedin so i'm hannah f pearson um or go check out the podcast that i co-host uh with gary bauman the southeast asia travel show um and we're on all the places you can find parts from spotify to apple to google podcasts for everywhere the sea asia travel show calm you can find us there too yeah and and for anyone's watching listening like if you're if you're watching or listening from outside southeast asia it's definitely something to to listen to uh because they come up with some great um statistical data uh they commentate on what's happening around there so you know you if you want the finger on the pulse when it comes to southeast asia travel what's going on definitely check out the uh the podcast it's gonna be in the show notes below anyway so so yeah so hannah big big thank you so much for coming on to the show again um congratulations on all the new things that's happened you know between the last uh interview that we had and now and i'm looking forward to a prosperous 2022 as well so big big thank you and for anyone's watching or listening thank you so much make sure you you know you subscribe you do all that kind of fun stuff else out in the algorithm and i'll see you on the next show
2022-02-21 15:36
