Tourism tipped to thrive in Asia

Voices for new tourism trends and a bright future ahead are echoing at the International Hospitality Investment Forum (IHIF) Asia, held on Monday through Sept 11, gathering top players in family offices, global hotel brands and leading developers.

Speakers from across the world are analyzing empowering tourism destinations, exploring plans for growth potential, investment, innovating and even future leadership of sustainability on the opening day.

Rizki Handayani, deputy minister of Industry and Investment of the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy of Indonesia, said meetings, incentives, conferencing, and exhibitions, or MICE, were getting "bigger and bigger" in the ten-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN.

"As a government, we produced some regulations inviting investors to come. We have special economic zones," Handayani told a session, noting that Indonesia is keen on more MICE event investment in Indonesia for infrastructure and attracting international organizers.

Indonesia has started developing maritime tourism, which has prompted them to collaborate with other sectors such as fisheries, while open to sustainable tourism solutions. "When we talk about investments not only in the hotel industry but now it's also related to smart tourism, digital tourism, and also to focus on creative industries like the film industry," said Handayani.

Sultan Al-Shehri, chief of investment at Aseer Development Authority in Saudi Arabia said giga projects — such as the country's NEOM project, Diriyah, and the Aseer region — were helping reshape the Saudi tourism sector. "All these are opening doors. It will create more momentum (for) businesses to look into Saudi".

He said the Saudi government has moved to make doing business easier, noting that the pandemic had also forced Saudis to explore the country more. This benefited the country after it welcomed more than 100 million tourists in 2023.

Al-Shehri said they have a dedicated fund for SMEs and have incubators and accelerators to help entrepreneurs in the sector.

Taimur Baig, managing director and chief economist of group research at DBS Bank Limited, said they were bullish about Southeast Asia, with China being a major player in the global landscape.

Despite "all the pushback on tech", the world is "seeing Chinese brands innovate" and that the Chinese entrepreneurs were bearing fruit amid global challenges, he said, noting that US domestic politics is "forcing the Chinese to become self-sufficient".

Given the way the world is shaping up, Asia is the region that stands to substantially benefit from "all this globalization, policy, tech restrictions", Baig said. "It's happening as we speak."

Liz Ortiguera, managing director of Asia Pacific and senior advisor to the CEO at the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), said the region's governments had underestimated the reach of travel and tourism.

"We really are a mega sector ... if you include our colleagues in West Asia, we're even larger," she said during the "Catalysts of Tourism and Hospitality Investment: Infrastructure, Regulation, Policy, and Mega Projects" panel.

"Today, we encompass 10 percent of the jobs in the Asia Pacific and that's going to grow in the next years to 12.5 percent. Not only is travel and tourism going to create 100 million jobs in the next 10 years, 64 million of them are in this region," she added.

Ortiguera said a high concentration of those jobs will be in ASEAN with several trends proving this prospect.

Post-pandemic tourism has seen a growing interest in food, heritage, spiritual, and wellness travel, sectors catalyzed by COVID-19, she said, and the last two years were about "switching everything back on" and getting everyone back to work.

"Even though there's slow recovery in this region, we're going to be the engine for growth in the future," Ortiguera said.

She added that governments have focused on sustainability and communities and urged investors to consider communities in their investments.