Gary Bowerman

Kuala Lumpur

Co-Founder and Host at The South East Asia Travel Show

Producer at Asia Travel Re:Set

Asia Travel & Consumer Trends Analyst | China Author | The South East Asia Travel Show | Speaker & Media Commentator

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Articles

Issue #187: Reflections from Phuket on Thailand's Direction of Travel

2 weeks ago | asiatravelreset.substack.com | Gary Bowerman

Welcome to Issue 187 of Asia Travel Re:Set. Almost 4 years ago, Phuket became the epicentre of South East Asia’s travel reboot. For 16 months, region-wide Covid border closures had curtailed travel activity, and created a horrible mess for supply chains, trade flows, stock markets and SMEs. Then, on 1 July 2021, Thailand introduced the Phuket Sandbox. This was the region’s first - albeit heavily restricted - attempt to reopen to tourism.
Issue #186: South East Asia's Most Important Week of 2025 So Far

4 weeks ago | asiatravelreset.substack.com | Gary Bowerman

Welcome to Issue 186 of Asia Travel Re:Set. Over the coming days, superpower talks in Geneva, US tariff negotiations with leading Asian economies and war in South Asia will dominate regional attention. All 3 situations share a common denominator: they will influence South East Asia’s near-term economic trajectory.
Issue #185: 5 Chinese Golden Week Travel & Tourism Stories You May Have Missed

1 month ago | asiatravelreset.substack.com | Gary Bowerman

Welcome to Issue 185 of Asia Travel Re:Set. Am back in KL after a frenetic few days at the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai. The levels of travel and tourism investment across the GCC region are eye-opening. Next stop: Bangkok for the TDM Travel Trade Global Summit 2025 on Thursday. I’ll be moderating the Rethinking ASEAN & APAC Travel Markets in 2025 and Beyond panel with Patee Sarasin, CEO, Really Cool Airlines and Deepshikha Sehgal, Head of Lodging, Ground & Sea APAC, Sabre.
Issue #184: Tracking Macau’s Quest to Diversify its Casino Tourism Economy

1 month ago | asiatravelreset.substack.com | Gary Bowerman

Welcome to Issue 184 of Asia Travel Re:Set. It’s been a while (Issue 119) since we took a proper dive into Macau, one of the most intriguing destinations in Asia Pacific. This tiny island cluster spans just 33 sq km, but attracted 35 million visitors in 2024. The ‘Las Vegas of Asia’ is now reinvesting its casino gaming revenues to diversify the tourism economy. So, let’s follow that train of thought.
Issue #183: Planes, Trains & China's ASEAN Trade Meetings

1 month ago | asiatravelreset.substack.com | Gary Bowerman

Welcome to Issue 183 of Asia Travel Re:Set. Over the past 2 weeks, reams of well-presented data have spotlit the scope of commercial interactions between China and ASEAN nations and the US. This is important because it helps plug a knowledge gap about international trade. But reliable trade data is mostly annual, quarterly or monthly, ie, back-dated. And what we saw in ASEAN this week was the trade-planning process in action.
Issue #182: China, ASEAN & Asia Pacific Confront the Turmoil of Trump's Tariffs

1 month ago | asiatravelreset.substack.com | Gary Bowerman

Welcome to Issue 182 of Asia Travel Re:Set. A bitcoin for Anwar Ibrahim’s thoughts? Malaysia’s (impressively statesman-like) Prime Minister has a tricky twin role to manage his country through the tariff crisis and chair the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). He will welcome China’s President Xi Jinping next week (15-17 April) at the start of an impromptu mini ASEAN tour. How many bitcoins to be a fly on that meeting room wall? Thanks for checking in…PS.
Issue #181: The Impact of Trump’s Tariffs in ASEAN & Asia Pacific: One Week On (Part 1)

1 month ago | asiatravelreset.substack.com | Gary Bowerman

Welcome to Issue 181, a special midweek edition of Asia Travel Re:Set. A hot, humid late-summer’s morning in Shanghai in 2008. I’m in a descending elevator from an upper floor of a skyscraper in Pudong: China’s Wall Street. A group of Chinese bankers enters on a mid-level floor. They speak in hushed, courteous but evidently upbeat tones. Lehmann Brothers had collapsed overnight. China’s major banks had been recently recapitalised. ICBC had completed the world’s largest IPO.
Issue #180: South East Asia's Top 8 Travel & Tourism Takeaways in March

2 months ago | asiatravelreset.substack.com | Gary Bowerman

Welcome to Issue 180 of Asia Travel Re:Set. Cambodia 49%. Laos 48%. Vietnam 46%. Myanmar 44%. Thailand 36%, Indonesia 32%. Malaysia 24%. Brunei 24%. Philippines 17%. Singapore 10%. The power-crazed machismo disguised as economic policy of the Ttump administration will see its new tariffs hit South East Asian economies very hard. The knock-on global impacts (including for the US itself) are blindingly obvious. Some countries may retaliate, others could yield. All have started to negotiate.
Issue #179: Vietnam Fast-tracks High-Speed Rail to Accelerate Economic Growth

2 months ago | asiatravelreset.substack.com | Gary Bowerman

Welcome to Issue 179 of Asia Travel Re:Set. So, firstly, all thoughts are with the people of Myanmar after Friday’s earthquake. The full, devastating impacts are still unclear. So, I said last week that there would be no newsletter this week. But, March was an intriguing month, which we reviewed on The South East Asia Travel Show. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of speculation about Vietnam’s strategy should it be targeted (next week) by US tariffs. So, let’s follow that train of thought.
Viet Nam Fast-Tracks High-Speed Rail

2 months ago | asiamediacentre.org.nz | Gary Bowerman

“This project is pivotal for restructuring transport and serves as a cornerstone for Viet Nam’s leap into a new era of growth.” Those words by Nguyen Danh Huy, Viet Nam’s Deputy Minister of Transport, summarise the rationale for investing USD67 billion in South East Asia’s advanced rail system. On 30 November 2024, Viet Nam’s National Assembly approved the development of a 1,541km North-South high-speed railway with trains set to run at up to 350kph.