The Lunar New Year travel period has begun! Chinese tourists are staggering their trips to South East Asia to avoid the Golden Week travel rush... So, following this trend, we've expedited our monthly round-up. This week, Gary and Hannah assess the Top 8 talking points from a very hectic January 2025 – perhaps even more frenetic than usual given the fairly early occurrence of the LNY. This month's top takeaways take us to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Laos, Myanmar… and more. Along the way, we discuss the Thai Prime Minister's AI video to assure Chinese tourists about safety, Bali buries its hotel development moratorium, the Visit 2026 campaign experiences hiccups in Malaysia, and there's an unexpected move in Laos as it revokes visa waivers. Plus, we touch on an intriguing budget win by the Secretary of Tourism in the Philippines, and we celebrate the first same-sex marriage ceremonies in Thailand.
The South East Asia Travel Show
South East Asia's Top 8 Pre-Lunar New Year Travel & Tourism Talking Points: January 2025 in Review
Hello, it's Friday 24th of January. I'm Hannah Pearson. On today's show, Gary Bowerman and I will be rounding up the top eight travel and tourism talking points from across the region during the first month of 2025. So, let's get started. This is the Southeast Asia Travel Show. Hello, wherever you are in the world and thanks for listening in. So we're a little early with our January monthly round up as the Lunar New Year travel period is almost upon us. So before the rush begins, Hannah and I have created a list of the top eight talking points from a very hectic January, perhaps even more frenetic than usual given the fairly earlier currents of the Lunar New Year. Over the next 30 minutes, we'll travel around Southeast Asia to rewind the top takeaways with stopovers in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Laos, Myanmar and much more. So, Hannah, let's start as always by looking back at the figures. And this year, we've got the full year figures. We do, although not for everybody's, but for about five out of eight. So not too bad. So Thailand, of course, I mean, everyone would guess that this is the big one, 35.5 million international arrivals in the full year for 2024. Although, if you remember, Gary, beginning this time last year, they wanted 40 million. So it's definitely fallen short of their expectations, but still a fairly decent showing, I'd say. We've got Vietnam at 17.6 million. Cambodia at 6.7 million, which beats Philippines by almost 1 million. Philippines only came in at 5.95 million tourist arrivals. And we've even got Myanmar's full year international arrivals, whether you are quite used to believe them or not, which is around 1 million international arrivals, lower than 2023 is 1.3 million. And from January to November, we've got Malaysia who's at 22.5 Singapore at 15.1 and Indonesia at 12.6. So we're still very much nobody got back to 2019 levels, you could say. Interesting figures, Hannah. Obviously, as you said, Thailand, as we always talk about, is the key standout figure there. Cambodia is an interesting one, I think Philippines too. But yeah, I mean, so two four years really after recovery, I guess you could say it's on track. I think the most that we can probably take away is that 2022.25 is going to be a very, very difficult year. I think the growth rates will be slower. Getting back to those 2019 figures is obviously the objective, I guess, from most countries. But really, I think they need to look at growth going forward, not really going backwards. It's what, five or six years ago now, we really need to start looking forward, don't we? Yes, please. Yes. And, you know, to give that obvious rebuttal, I know we often get listeners or people saying, but why are you using international arrivals numbers as the benchmark for recovery, we should be looking at spend and everything else. Yes, 100% agreed, but they just don't report those numbers as often. So I think we kind of use this as a proxy, don't we, Gary, is that signal for how well a country is doing or recovering or not for better or for worse. But yeah, I agree with you. I think for two reasons, the one we use them is one that governments publish them because they use them in a competitive context. You know, everybody is competing with each other for travels and tourists. And I often think that the spend figures, they're very hard to prove there is absolutely no drill down on any of them. You know, are they verifiable? It's really, really hard to tell. So I think, really, yes, it would be great to have better metrics. It would be great to have better data, but we don't. And so I think we have to use what we've got. Agreed. But yeah, I thought it was just worth raising it. We've not raised that for a while while we use them, but just for listeners sake. It's going to be a roundy show, I think, Anna. I think so. I think we've both got a lot on our chest and I've got a cough. So I've got even more on my chest. So moving on in to the ASEAN tourism forum, which, of course, took place in Johor Baru last week in the beginning of this week as well. It was a bit of a different setup. It's normally, you will always have this, they call the Travis, the travel exhibition, and then you have the minister's meeting. So you kind of have the private sector and the public sector meetings generally happening in the same week. But this time in Malaysia, they kind of half split. So some people spent an awful long time in Johor Baru for the last week or so. It was interesting. I mean, I was down there, I was helping to run the ASEAN tourism conference. And I would say, you know, out of the press that has come out from ATF so far, I haven't seen any earth, anything really earth-shattering, if you go. No, I haven't. To some degree didn't expect. I mean, some countries weren't there, were they? I mean, Singapore didn't really turn out. And I think it comes back again to this issue about, you know, whether ASEAN, to some degree, is fragmenting, and what actual value does ASEAN have? It has value in terms of the security of the region, in terms of governments thinking together. But they have their own objectives. A couple of countries are joining the BRICS group. You know, what is the actual value of ASEAN in terms of policymaking or actually setting agendas? It looks weaker than ever, I would say. Yeah. I mean, I would tend to agree with that. And I think it's kind of interesting because during this ATF, they always have foreign ministers from other countries as well. So they have the kind of tourism ministers with ASEAN plus China, or plus Japan, plus Republic of Korea, Russia, gets an invite in India. A new one that they were talking about that they've approved to launch for next year is Australia. So they're going to have the Australian Tourism Minister, along with these ASEAN Tourism Ministers as well. So it's, like you say, ASEAN is an interesting organisation with policies and not many people implementing those policies. But we didn't see a huge amount of movement, but interesting that they want to bring Australia a little bit more into that fold. Yeah, I would agree with that. One of the things that got mentioned, Hannah, is something we've talked about for a while. And that's the idea of some kind of ASEAN tourism visa or a way to make it easier for travellers to come into the ASEAN countries, perhaps some degree of uniformity. But again, it was talked around, but it wasn't talked directly. And there seems to be absolutely no policy landscape or structure or even schedule for this. Did you get any sense about whether this might happen? No, no, right? Yeah, like you say, it's just something we see in headlines, don't we? We see in articles or talked about. But as we've said, many times on the plot before, we just can't see how it would happen or what would be the incentives for some of the countries to join it, even if it did happen. Particularly those countries, you already have an open visa policy. I mean, it doesn't really make any difference to them. So yeah, an interesting question. Like Gary, you picked up on a kind of Indonesia ASEAN-focused, didn't you? Yeah, so Indonesia's new tourism minister, Woody Antipuchi Waddana, we've spoken about this beforehand. I think at the end of last year, when she took over the role, sort of set out some of the programs that she would like to include, but they were quite generic and we didn't really get much detail. I think we were hoping that at the ASEAN forum, we would get more detail. We didn't really. But I think one of the interesting things that we did find out was that she wants to focus perhaps more so than before on the ASEAN market. Did you get that in that kind of feeling? Yeah, I mean, it also makes sense for Indonesia to want to do that. I mean, of course, they've got this huge reliance, I guess you can say now on Australia, but they have got all of that potential from the ASEAN markets. I think just what Indonesia still lacks really is a lot of that, in a secondary city to secondary city, connections with other countries in ASEAN. I mean, some countries, of course, Singapore, you know, very, very strong connections to Malaysia also. But you know, if you were talking about Indonesia to the Philippines or Indonesia to secondary destinations in Thailand or Vietnam, the connections just aren't so strong there. So they really have their kind of work cut out to look at how they can improve that flight connectivity. And through that, get more ASEAN tourists in, if they don't just simply want ASEAN tourists to come in over the land borders, you know, from Indonesia or Tim or Leicester. Yeah, I agree with that. It's said that last year they attracted 4.3 million arrivals from Southeast Asian countries. That's more than a third. But I agree with you about the flight connectivity. And I think the other problem they have is just the concentration of that flight connectivity is into Jakarta and it's into Bali. And you know, there's a lot of talk really about whether more of that could be channeled towards destinations like your Jakarta elsewhere. But again, that's going to come down to, it's okay government saying we would like more airlines to fly to different destinations, but the airlines have to be incentivized and they have to know that there's demand to actually do that. And, you know, Indonesia has been all about Bali. There's no doubt about that tourism has been very, very concentrated in Bali. And that's where the airlines fly to. I think it's going to be very difficult to persuade them to go to other destinations that are untried, untested and where the demand simply is improving. Yeah. And I guess one of the things is also looking at what could be that outbound demand from those Indonesian cities as well. So for example, Surabaya, there's maybe not a top tourism destination, but certainly got plenty of fairly affluent Indonesians who want to travel outbound. So it's looking at that and trying to match up those patterns of demand. But like you say, Gary, it's very much in the lap of the airlines, unless they get a very good financial incentive to make it worth their while. Yeah, totally agree with that, Hannah. So on that basis, let's stay within Indonesia. And number four on our top eight stories from January is Bali. And the Bali governor's decision not to impose a moratorium on tourism, real estate development. Hannah, I'm not surprised at all. This doesn't surprise me. So I never thought it would happen. What do you think? Yeah, it's unsurprising. Yeah. I mean, obviously it made a big splash at the end of last year when it was coming out saying, Oh, yes, we're thinking of imposing this moratorium and it was going to be on new developments of hotels, beach clubs and commercial tourism properties in Changu, Luatu, Kuta, Leggian, Semenyak and Nousadua. And obviously he's rolled that back now saying that he wants kind of tighter controls, but not going into what those tighter controls necessarily mean either. So I'm sure that investors in these kind of tourism properties and developments will be breathing a sigh of relief because they've got some kind of clarity and guarantee that things can go forward. But what that then means for Bali's sustainable tourism future, I think leaves a lot of questions. Yeah, I agree. I was contacted by Skift and asked a comment on this. And I said that I think what really changed the whole scenario really was when President Prabot was said towards the end of last year that he wants to build a new airport in Bali in the north and increase its tourism, its leisure sectors and really expand that whole part of the economy. So once that had happened, I think the moratorium was dead in the water because there's no way that you can attract investors when you've got moratoriums, even if they're not in the north, they were actually in the south. So it just wasn't logical thinking. At the same time, I think you're right, what happens to the sustainability angle to tourism in Bali? Who knows that it's going to be growth, it's going to be investment, I don't think there's too much doubt about that. But I think the interesting point you mentioned there about investors, the media often reports is as foreign investors coming into Bali, but a lot of the investment comes actually from Indonesia itself and Indonesian investors would not have been happy with the moratorium. So I don't think this is just about inbound investment. I think it's national investment as well. Yeah, that's interesting. So yeah, an unsurprising start to the gear. But you know, I did have a, you know, you always like to hold on a little bit of hope, like, okay, maybe something is going to change. But like you said, Gary, when we started to hear the new president's plans for new airports in Bali and you're thinking, how does that, I think we even discussed that last year, didn't we? We were like, how does this kind of chime with this other policy? This doesn't really fit. Oh, there we go. So moving on from Bali and going to Thailand, where of course we've been tracking one of the main stories that's been at least running in the headlines, which is, of course, the Chinese actor Wang Xing, who went missing in Thailand and was eventually turned up and rescued from a Myanmar scam center. Gary, I think we, you've got a bit to say about this one, don't you? Well, there's so much mystery around this story. It's, there's a lot about this that doesn't sit quite fit. And but I think the issue really is the media is picked up. In fact, there were some cancellations from China. There was a lot of talk on Chinese social media about safety and security in Thailand, which is true that that is actually happening, but at the moment that is chatter on social media. A lot of Chinese tourists have been interviewed in the last few days in Thailand. And some of them have said that they were a little bit reticent to come, but they've come anyway. I think the interesting thing about Chinese New Year, we've seen in since the pandemic, saw it last year and definitely seeing it this year, is staggering of trips. So it's not just all during that rush period of the Chinese New Year week itself, because it's it's so busy. The airports are really busy and the costs are a bit higher. We're seeing seeing more staggered trips in a couple of weeks before Chinese New Year and a couple of weeks after. So the whole period has extended. So when you take that into consideration, you look at the number of cancellations, it's relatively small. Silence Prime Minister, Prime Minister Shinoa reached out to Chinese tourists and did an AI video where she's speaking sort of transpose into Mandarin, trying to assure them that they're safe and secure when they come to Thailand. And I think that's quite important because safety and security is the number one priority for Chinese tourists. But I also think a little bit that Thailand is looking in the wrong direction. If you look at what's currently happening in Thailand, its air quality is terrible. And that happens every year at Chinese New Year. And as I was in Bangkok 10 years ago, 2015, and the air quality was terrible. 10 years later, it's still terrible. And nothing has been done about that. I think you've got to look at the issues that are actually going to impact people year on year. And they're not they're not getting anywhere near. I know it's a regional problem. It's not just Thailand's problem, but it is solvable. And it's not being solved. Yeah, that's an interesting way of looking at it. I mean, and you can say the same for Songkran, right? Nearly always. It's the North, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai have really bad issues with haze. Of course, Songkran coming up in a few months. So let's see if that history repeats itself there as well. I mean, I think one of the interesting and you know, I totally take your point. And I think a lot of it is it's going to be a flash in the pan. I don't think it's really going to impact sentiment in the long term. I think it is quite interesting that the TAT has announced that they're planning to adjust its target for Asian arrivals, and that they're looking at other markets to offset weaker Chinese arrivals. But whether that's directly related to this incident, or it's just a trend that they're seeing that they're thinking, actually, do you know what? Maybe Chinese travelers, this incident or not, are not going to go back to that same level that they were. Let's go target India, which I'm sure is what they mean when they're looking at other potential markets. So it's probably the Indian market. I think that's absolutely spot line. I think you 100% of that. And I think there's two really interesting kind of data sets that follow what you're talking there. And one is that if you look at the airline seat capacity from China to Thailand this month, January, it's about 16, 1, 6% short of 2019. A year ago, it was 45% down on the year before. So supply is coming back. It's possibly a demand issue, as you say, is the demand there? And perhaps the fact that it hasn't fully recovered. If you look at the seat capacity into Singapore or into Malaysia, for example, they have surpassed last year. So you know, Chinese numbers, demand is holding up. Obviously, when you put that into a bigger context, Thailand is just by far the biggest market for Chinese tourists. It's the most visited country or it was until last year for Chinese outbound tourists. And it's certainly the biggest in the region. So you know, there's a bigger margin for drop off there. But I think you're right. I don't think that Thailand sees that this year is going to be a big percentage growth in the number of Chinese arrivals. And that probably is a demand issue, not supply. Yeah. So I think it would be really interesting to see how that plays out. And yeah, they'll be able to blame it on this incident, probably when they look back later in the year. But hopefully it's going to lead to a bit of soul searching that you're saying, Gary, what are some of the actual issues that are preventing Chinese travelers from coming in or that are preventing airlines from reinstating those flight frequencies back to Thailand? Because like you said, they've done that to Singapore. They've done that to Malaysia. I think Malaysia is well over 2019 levels. Now, even Chinese arrivals to Malaysia have surpassed 2019 levels. So something's going right for those and not quite heading in the right direction for Thailand. So if I were them, I'd be a little bit nervous. Yeah. And I just dropped one other thing into that discussion, Hannah. I think Thailand has made a huge play about visa-free travel for Chinese tourists and how that is, you know, the thug holy grail of how it's going to bring back the market hasn't done so. Last year, for the first time in many years, Japan actually had more Chinese tourists than Thailand. Japan doesn't offer visa-free access for Chinese tourists. So, you know, that isn't the only factor that's going to attract Chinese tourists. That's interesting. Yeah. I wonder how the, I'm just wondering out loud, I wonder how the UN is versus the the yen, because obviously the yen is performing very poorly versus the USDA one. Is it similar for Chinese yen? So it has had some impact on the shopping side of things. But I think the other aspect is it's very close. It's a short fall, but it is perceived as a safe and secure destination that has an impact. Yeah. It is a very safe and secure destination. So sticking with Thailand, I don't think we can talk about the month's top stories without talking about one of the biggest stories of the week, one of the best stories of the week, I think really, which is the fact that same-sex marriage has finally been legalized in Thailand. That was just yesterday, the 23rd of January, and there were apparently 1,832 same-sex couples who registered their marriages nationwide on the 23rd of January, so just yesterday. So that is happy news in this week full of Trump and all sorts of craziness, right? Yeah, absolutely. I was watching Channel News Asia yesterday, and their Thai correspondent, he's been with them for years and years. He was saying that finally, it's really nice to have a good news story. He said over the past few years, there have been so much gloom from, you know, coups and COVID and all the recovery issues that he's had to cover. He said it was great to actually be there witnessing what was such a happy story. You can see the happiness on the faces of these couples that were getting married. It really was an uplifting story in a week of generalized global gloom. Yes, so happy that that finally happened, and let's see what this impact is going to be. Are they going to be able to attract the pink pound like they've been saying? Is this going to be another segment that they're also going to be able to tap into tourism-wise? Let's see. But yeah, a very nice, happy news story for, as you said, a very gloomy January. So coming back to Malaysia, where we had the launch of the Visit Malaysia 2026 campaign, and this was actually launched by Malaysia's Prime Minister, Amwa Ibrahim, meant to have a focus on sustainable tourism. He was saying that Malaysia needs this balance between development and nature. They're talking about trying to expand the impact of this year beyond tourism, so benefiting transport, retail and food. But they've got a huge target. 35.6 million visitors and generating about 147 billion ring it in revenue. But they were off to a bit of a rocky start, weren't they, Gary? I think you went on the local business radio in Malaysia yesterday to discuss that with them too. Yeah, so Malaysia launched this program 2026, as they visit Malaysia year, mostly aimed at trade tourism marketing. It can be quite an effective way to galvanize the tourism industry to pull together against this target for 2026. And as you say, the key targets, the two metrics are spending and visitor arrivals. But it counted some problems. And the two main problems, whether it launched a 41 second video, one of these catch all videos encompassing everything that you see in a country, landscapes, culture, heritage, cuisine, all of that kind of thing. But there was the issues about inclusion, because there were some temples and a church that were featured, but not a mosque. So the tourism ministers decided to go back to the drawing board and completely redo the video. So that's delayed the campaign. There were also some issues around the two mascots, which are sun bears. And a lot of netizens said that they looked as they were created by AI. That's created another issue because it wasn't quite clear how much the designers were actually paid or if this was actually created by AI. But what they do, I think, highlight is that the strategic planning has gone a little bit awry because a video of that type should be inclusive in a nation like Malaysia, there is no excuse for it not being. But again, it does come back to, well, what is the actual overall value of a video like that? Is it basically just the front end of your campaign, which you then segment over the period of time, to appeal to different markets, to different demographics, different cohorts? Or is it actually the centerpiece of your marketing strategy? And that isn't really quite clear at the moment. Yeah, I mean, I agree with you there about the video. I mean, I think it feels very, I don't know, 1990s even, to just be like, yes, you know, this video is so important that it's going to impact everybody and everybody's perception of Malaysia. And that's just not true. That's not how people consume travel content anymore. People are not waiting for that latest video from the tourism board to drop, right? And making a decision based on that whether they're going to visit somewhere or not. Yes, it should be inclusive. And I am gutted that I didn't manage to get a picture with the mascots who were apparently roaming around ATF last last week. I looked, but didn't have the right timing. Yeah, I mean, I'm on the fence about visit years anyway. I think we've talked about this before on the show, because every beginning of every year, it's a different country or a different place that's got a visit. Yeah. And I just feel like this should be something that should be focused on throughout. And yes, it can galvanize the trade, I think, to a certain point and make them pull together. But, you know, especially if they're talking about doing infrastructure upgrades or whatever else it is that's going to be very special for that year, then you think, can't you just, and this, no, not from Malaysia, just in general, can't you just invest this money in general and just making sure that the infrastructure is just better upkept the whole time, not for just one year and make everything shiny and then go and leave it for another five years until you have the next visit, yeah? Yeah, I agree. We're going to come onto this point in a minute in another country. But I agree with 100%. And I think the interesting thing is the divergence and certainly the fragmentation of tourism behaviors now. So really, primarily these kind of campaigns are targeted at the organized travel sector, the travel trade, whereas the independent travelers, they don't watch these videos anyway. They don't care. They don't even probably notice that they're out there. They're watching short video apps. They're getting their ideas from each other. They're not interested in official messaging. So you have this massive divergence between the travel trade and the independence and how they actually travel and the way that they trip plan in Asia now. And I think that divergence is just widening. Ultimately, they have to do something. I understand that. It's the old argument. If you're co-core, you're Pepsi, if you stop advertising, do people stop buying your product? And you could actually use statistics both ways to say, yes, they would or no, they wouldn't. So I understand that Malaysia wants to invest in a campaign that promotes 2026, if that's its goal. But I agree with you as well, Hannah. It's kind of old school thinking that you could galvanize for one year, hit a certain target. And then what happens in 2027? What if everybody that you want to attract has come in 2026 or not come and you don't hit your target? What do you do in 2027? It's very short term, it's that thing. Yeah. So anyway, I think it is a bit of a stretch target. Let's see how they roll out in 2025 and what that buy in from the travel trade, which of course is super important to have and how we are included, they feel within that campaign and how motivated they are by it. I agree. So on that note, Hannah, that's the country that did have a visit year last year, 2024. What's happened in Laos? Yeah, I mean, and this is definitely a hot tip to Jason Rowland, our man in Fientiane for this one. But in a very strange kind of turn of events, Laos has actually reversed a lot of the special visa exemptions that it had enabled last year for its visit last year, 2024. So it had kind of implemented them quite later on in the year from 1st of July. But it saw things like free visas for Chinese travelers. It saw stays for up to 15 days visa free for Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan passport holders, there were multiple entry visas, 60 days stays instead of 30 days. All of these temporary border pass days of up to 10 days from three. And so there were a lot of incentives for people to stick around and trying to make it easier. And those have all been rolled back. So Chinese travelers have to pay for their visas now. And things are probably just a little bit more complicated. So I'm not quite sure that I followed the logic on this one. Was there any indication, Hannah, that, you know, they basically achieved what they wanted to in that year, or they didn't achieve what they wanted to do with visa free? So they decided to to can it. And just wondering what the explanation would be for doing that. Yeah, I mean, I haven't really seen one other than just the kind of official declaration, you know, that Jason shared that it's gone back to it. So, you know, from from the press around, you know, they're kind of reviewing how they did in the year 2024, they seem to be, at least in the press, fairly satisfied with what they wanted to achieve. And they achieved it. And now they, they've, yeah, rolled back the visas. So I don't, I don't get it. But hey, I am not a policymaker in Laos, I suppose. That's true. That's true. And yeah, interesting story. Let's see what happens with that as that as we go through the year, whether they reintroduce it at some point towards the end of the year again, as they did last year. Yeah, exactly. Maybe when they get halfway through the year and realize that their, their arrivals have jumped off a cliff. And they might suddenly implement some, some maneuvers. Yeah. So that's eight stories down. That's our top eight stories for them. But we got a bonus story this, this month, Hannah, that takes us to the Philippines. This is a good story, actually. Tell us a bit more. Yeah. So this is a story all about budgets. And, you know, it's, I think, probably amazing that we're into 2025 and budgets, I guess, have still not been finalized yet. But this is the Department of Tourism who was starting to appeal because their budgets have been really slashed for this year versus last year. And actually the, the Philippines president himself has now ordered the Department of Budget and Management to restore this 400 million pesos branding budget for the DOT, and which he says is just to sustain that momentum that they've already had. But the interesting thing is that this source of the fund is actually going to be from the office of the president's contingency fund itself. So he's, he's kind of fronting the money up himself rather than finding it from somewhere else. So clearly thinks that this is very important, actually. Yeah, it is an interesting story, isn't it? I mean, the budget was cut substantially, wasn't it? So it, I mean, it would have had a huge impact on their ability to, to market this year. And they probably did, I would say, make some progress last year in terms of their marketing. They hosted the UN tourism regional event. They were quite proactive. They have a very strong advocate, Christina Frasco is a very strong advocate for tourism. And she has obviously friends at very high levels if she can persuade the president to do this. It's great to see, I would have to say, I think it's great to see a tourism minister fighting so hard to get the money from the highest levels to support growth. Because, you know, the cost of COVID means that government budgets have been slashed and, you know, across the region. And it's quite difficult to maintain that momentum that perhaps countries thought they were, they were gaining if the budgets are slashed. So yeah, go, Christina, go. Exactly. Yeah, let's hope that that trickles down to the travel trade as well. And that Philippines can do a bit of a turnaround in what was quite a poor showing last year, I think. Although, as we've said, you know, they have been on record saying we had the biggest spend that we've ever had. We've just had very low numbers of visitors. So I think they've got a lot to crack this year. And hopefully that budget will help them to figure that out a little way and get the right tourists that they need. Yeah, I think so. I mean, they do have a lot of issues. They have a lot of issues in terms of access, flight capacity, where that capacity goes. Those are long-term issues. We discussed that last week on the mega projects podcast that, you know, Ni Noikino needs a massive upgrade. It's about to happen, but it will take time. The new Manila airport is still under construction. So there are issues in terms of bringing them as tourists in. We've also talked before about the China market, which is a little bit tricky at the moment, given relations between the two countries. And I also think that Philippines' geography doesn't really help it particularly. You know, that mainland Southeast Asia, intra-azian tourism is between those countries mostly. Then you look at Northeast Asia, it's between the Northeast Asian countries and Philippines is kind of stuck a little bit in the middle. I don't think geography helps the Philippines at all. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, there's got a lot of issues like that. And some of the key markets like Japan are not coming, right? So they also kind of suffering from that as well. And it almost feels, Philippines almost feels very different to the rest of the region in terms of that. That demographic, really, of source markets. Yeah, totally agree. So with that, that brings the show to a close for this month. Please join the conversation on our LinkedIn page at the Southeast Asia Travel Show. Yeah. And as always, you can catch up with the Southeast Asia Travel Show's full back catalog on our website, seasiotravelshow.com. And you can find us on any international podcast platform. So that's a wrap for today. Gary is heading to Paris to track Chinese New Year in the French capital. But we'll be back soon to talk more Southeast Asia travel and tourism. Speak to you then. [MUSIC] [SIDE CONVERSATION] [MUSIC] [SIDE CONVERSATION] [MUSIC] [SIDE CONVERSATION] [MUSIC] [SIDE CONVERSATION] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] (upbeat music)