After three weeks in Japan, Singapore and Italy, Gary and Hannah are back in KL to recap the top travel talking points from September and early October. China's Mid-Autumn Golden Week has just wrapped up, so we assess the current state of play in a diversifying Chinese outbound market. Elsewhere, we discuss a raft of new Muslim-friendly tourism initiatives being introduced across South East Asia, note a shift towards waterborne transport innovation and crunch the numbers of a tax relief scheme for travel industry workers in Indonesia. Plus, Thailand's THB300 Tourism Tax is being resuscitated (again), and the nation's tourism authority is turning to the diplomatic community as travel influencers. Plus, we delve deeper into AirAsia's potential purchase of COMAC planes, and take a quick layover in Brunei to reflect on the region's smallest visitor economy.

Economic and social processes shape tourism development, but - in turn - tourism reshapes economic spaces, and that is creating new challenges in South East Asia and beyond. This week, Gary welcomes Joao Romao, Associate Professor at Yasuda Women’s University in Japan, to discuss his new book, Economic Geography of Tourism. An economist, tourism strategy advisor and former travel documentary maker, Joao assesses contemporary tourism through a lens of shifting global economic, technological, societal, environmental and political challenges. He advocates for tourism strategies that are economically viable and effectively sustainable, inclusive and resilient - but questions whether these can be achieved in modern political economies. Starting in his home country of Japan, we travel through South East Asia to South America and Europe to discuss the accumulating societal issues confronting tourism planners. We assess the implications of technological advancements on urban and secondary destinations, and the concentration of priceless travel data among a small coterie of tech firms. We finish by looking at how long-term partnerships with creative industries and the wellness sector might forge a more manageable balance of travel flows between cities and decentralised destinations.

As we speed towards the 4th quarter of 2025, some economic metrics in South East Asia are trending towards nervousness. Air travel capacity is a primary case study, where the year-on-year data is mostly positive (look away now, Indonesia), but the ASEAN and APAC regions (overall) are still playing catching from 2019... all those pre-Covid years ago. Plus, on our weekly travel news roundup, Gary and Hannah journey across ASEAN to discuss the top talking points in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines and Timor Leste. En route, we discuss the devastating flooding fallout in Bali, 'brownouts' in Boracay, Koh Samui's controversial mega-bridge and the downbeat news that the Thai-Cambodia border "will not be reopened soon." To salve the sense of gloom, we finish by keeping our fingers crossed that Timor Leste will be admitted as the 11th member of ASEAN - although no-one seems quite sure.