Southeast Asia is looking to India for a tourism reboot. The pitch is working, going by the rising number of Indian tourists flocking to Southeast Asia’s cities, beaches, mountains and places of pleasure. But how reciprocal is the love? Are travellers from Southeast Asia equally smitten by India?

The ASEAN portal says 4,291,507 Indians travelled to ASEAN countries in 2023. Till the 3rd quarter of 2024, the number was 4,273,181. In contrast, India received 754,230 visitors from ASEAN in 2023. The corresponding figure from January to October 2024 was 662,605.

ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) has a combined population of over 677 million and a combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $3.8 trillion. In a recent meeting of ASEAN tourism ministers held in Johor, Malaysia, alongside the 12th Meeting of ASEAN-India Tourism Ministers (M-ATM Plus India), there was much talk about the growing importance of the ASEAN-India tourism partnership. Delegates spoke about the need to foster mutual understanding, enhance connectivity, and promote people-to-people exchanges.

But the numbers show the imbalance. The question is: why?

There are many reasons why more Indians are flocking to Southeast Asia. On a recent trip to Ho Chi Minh City, I found nearly a dozen........

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