Dear AST friend,

In this week’s Feature Story, we share the key takeaways from last week’s AST Webinar. Scroll down to read the full article and watch the recording.

While you’re here, don’t miss our next AST Webinar on 19 February. Registration details are below 👇

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Is Triple Win Possible? Guests Return, People Prosper, Nature Thrives

For decades, tourism has focused on a narrow promise — happy guests and healthy profits — using growth indicators such as visitor arrivals and room occupancy to fuel an industry that contributed a total of USD 10.9 trillion to the global GDP in 2024, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council.

This formula powered decades of growth across Asia. It created jobs, lifted communities out of poverty, and introduced millions of travelers to the region’s cultures and landscapes.

However, this is achieved while externalizing costs that matter most to long-term viability, including biodiversity loss, infrastructure strain, and socio-economic equity.

It is notable that tourism leakage typically accounts for 50–80% of total tourist spending, particularly in the least developed countries, according to The Travel Foundation. In Bali, for example, more than 55% of spending in high-end tourism, notably within four-and five-star hotels, leaks out of the local economy.

The question facing the industry today is no longer whether tourism needs to change, but how deeply.

That was the central focus of Asia Sustainable Travel’s recent webinar, “Is Triple Win Possible? Guests Return, People Prosper, Nature Thrives.”

Bringing together a travel business founder, a conservation practitioner, and a systems designer, the discussion cut through surface-level sustainability claims to examine whether tourism can truly deliver value for guests, people, and nature — at the same time, and over the long term.

The answer from the webinar was neither idealistic nor dismissive.

Triple-win outcomes are possible, but only if tourism stops treating sustainability as an add-on and starts redesigning how value is created, measured, and shared.

This webinar also made clear that incremental fixes are no longer enough. What’s required is a structural reset.

In this article:

• What’s really at stake: Tourism optimizes the wrong things

• The (upstream) demand problem: When short-term thinking erodes long-term value

• Over-tourism vs. Under-tourism: Asia’s double-edged reality

• Conservation-first hospitality: When nature is the business model

• Why good intentions fail: structural barriers to triple-win tourism

Register now for the upcoming AST Webinar! 

Every direct booking is a vote of confidence in your brand.

It’s not just about cutting OTA commissions; it’s about owning the guest relationship and building long-term loyalty.

When a guest chooses you first, you own the relationship, the data, and the revenue.

But with OTA dominance and rising acquisition costs, how do you make direct the preferred channel?

In sustainability discussions, many forget that profit is a key pillar.
Without financial resilience and healthy margins, a hotel cannot sustain its operations, staff, or sustainability-led initiatives.

Recovering this revenue is the focus of our upcoming webinar, “Own the Guest, Own the Revenue: Advanced Direct Booking Strategies.”

What you’ll learn:

• How to shift the balance away from OTA dependency with real-world case studies from Blessy Townes of Discovery Hospitality

• How to use predictive personalization to create tailored experiences that convert, with insights from Ivan Cintado of The Hotels Network (THN, now a Lighthouse company)

• How to transform your existing video content into shoppable booking engines with Madhavan Nair of Hoffero

• The AI-driven SEO strategies you need to get prioritized by search tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, from Eduard Ruppel of Leppur Marketing

Moderator: Rhea Vitto Tabora - Co-Founder, Asia Sustainable Travel (AST)

📅 Thursday, 19 February 2026 
⏰ 4:00–5:00 PM (UTC+8)

Secure your spot and receive a Zoom link to join live.

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