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Before COVID-19, the countries of Southeast Asia were some of the world’s most popular travel destinations. The pandemic changed that in a matter of months — with devastating repercussions for the region’s $380 billion tourism industry. In early 2022, though, the tide started to turn again. Southeast Asian nations have eased travel restrictions, and the region’s travelers are eager to make up for lost time. They’re committed to traveling more frequently, open to new destinations, and determined to make the most of the opportunities that are now opening up.

To understand these travelers’ preferences and expectations — and the opportunity that resurgent demand creates for the region’s tourism operators — we took a closer look at some recent Google Search trends.

Resurgent demand

In Southeast Asia, inbound travel demand – visits by non-residents to a country – has experienced the fastest upturn in the Philippines and Indonesia, based on search volumes. In March, inbound demand for the Philippines had already surpassed pre-pandemic figures (hitting 104% of pre-pandemic search volumes), while Indonesia is close to a full rebound too (94%). These two countries have also seen the fastest resurgence in outbound travel – visits by their residents to other countries – with search volumes bouncing back to 70% of pre-pandemic levels. Singapore is in third place for both inbound and outbound travel demand.

Travelers crave luxury and care about sustainability

While the surge in demand is welcome, it’s important that the industry understands and caters to travelers’ changing needs. Search trends make it clear that the travel environment today is more complex than it was before the pandemic.

• People are spending more time researching, planning and finding options, seeking peace of mind, and making sure they’re covered for unexpected changes. We saw year-on-year growth of more than 165% in travel insurance-related searches in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.
• Tourists are keen to stay longer when they do travel: interest in vacation rentals among Southeast Asian travelers rose by more than 1010% year-on-year.
• “Revenge travelers” — those most eager to make up for lost time — are ready to pay for premium travel options. Among travelers from the Philippines, searches for “luxury resorts” and “beach resorts” are up 60% year on year.
• There’s growing consciousness of sustainability across the region — and particularly in Singapore and the Philippines. Searches related to sustainability have grown by 45% since 2019, while searches related to greenhouse gas emissions have increased by more than 163% in Singapore and by more than 156% in the Philippines.

How we’re adapting Google tools to help

We’re committed to helping travelers find the long-awaited travel experience they’re looking for, while navigating the complex environment. On Google Travel, the Flights, Hotels and Things to Do sections now provide more information on COVID — and give travelers the option to search for flexible booking options. The Google Travel Help website makes it easier for people to understand travel policies, restrictions, and special requirements. And for travelers seeking out new experiences, we’ve added more destinations to the Explore tab — including smaller cities and national parks — and options to filter by interests like outdoors, beaches or skiing.

We’re also helping travelers make more sustainable choices when they research and book, including giving hotels the ability to show an eco-certified badge next to their name and share details about their sustainability practices, plus providing carbon emission estimates for flights.

Supporting the industry recovery

In addition to evolving our tools for travelers, we’re doing a lot of work to help our industry partners tap into travel insights and plan for the future. Using Travel Insights with Google, businesses, governments and tourism boards can make decisions based on up-to-date information and move quickly when an opportunity arises.

To help smaller businesses in the travel industry reach potential customers on a large scale, we’ve made it possible for all hotels and travel companies to show free booking links in their profiles — and see how many people clicked on those links by generating reports on Hotel Center.

This is a pivotal time for the industry. People are finally booking trips, having dreamed about it (and saved up for it) for so long. They have higher expectations, including for seamless digital experiences throughout their journey. But they’re ready to spend more money and time on travel than they would have in the past. And the resurgent demand we see in Southeast Asia is just the beginning, with major destinations like China and Japan yet to re-open.

Looking ahead, there’s an enormous opportunity for travel businesses who can understand their customers and give them relevant, personalized experiences. We’ll keep doing everything we can to help, and to contribute to a strong, sustainable travel recovery across the region.

Since at least the 1400s, people have looked for ways to protect themselves against infectious diseases. From the practice of “variolation” in the 15th century to today’s mRNA vaccines, immunization has a long history. Integral to that history has been the World Health Organization (WHO), whose global vaccine drives through the 20th and 21st centuries have played such a crucial role in reducing serious illness. For World Immunization Week, WHO has teamed up with Google Arts & Culture and scientific institutions from around the world to bring this history vividly to life with A Brief History of Vaccination.

From insufflation to vaccination

Looking back at the history of vaccination, with detailed stories drawn from medical archives, you’ll discover how we arrived at the jabs that have saved lives across the world. While you’ll encounter famous pioneers like Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Edward Jenner and Louis Pasteur, you’ll also learn that vaccination has a much older history. In 15th-century China, for instance, there existed the practice of “insufflation” — blowing dried smallpox scabs into the nostril with a pipe to prevent natural smallpox, which was far more dangerous.

It was in the 20th century that earlier discoveries really started to bear fruit. Smallpox was eradicated globally and vaccines for polio, measles, influenza, hepatitis B, meningitis and many other diseases were developed. It was also the century that saw the inauguration of the WHO and its vital “Expanded Programme on Immunization,”which opened up a truly global front against vaccine-preventable diseases. A Brief History of Vaccination helps you to experience these great advances through photos, archive footage and historic scientific documents.

There are also those whose stories aren’t so well known, but nevertheless deserve to be told. You’ll learn about the enlightened Grand Duke of Tuscany who experimented with inoculation in the 18th century. Also featured here are the Mexican authorities whose efforts to defeat smallpox in the 19th century were ahead of their time.

Unfinished history

Of course, the struggle against infectious disease is ongoing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, new stories emerged of ingenuity and resilience against the odds. You’ll learn of the heroism of Spanish and British health workers, and the man from Uttarakhand who became a one-man ambulance service in the remote mountain villages of northern India.

As authorities and communities around the world have strived to contain the pandemic, it has become ever more apparent that education is key to any successful vaccination program. With this in mind, educators can find a clear and accessible lesson plan that will provide learners with useful information about vaccination history.

Through A Brief History of Vaccination we learn, above all, that our fight against infectious diseases has united people across continents and cultures. As Louis Pasteur observed, “Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.”

The following is adapted from remarks delivered by Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs, at Beyond the Basics: The Many Pillars of U.S. Privacy Law, an event hosted by R Street Institute at The National Press Club in Washington, DC. Google also published an accompanying white paperon Responsible Data Practices.

Information is all around us. Americans sometimes take it for granted, but from the moment we walk out our front doors, information powers everything we do.

After a two-years-and-counting pandemic, when people have taken to tech at an unprecedented pace, they’re more aware of both the possibilities and the privacy challenges.

They may have even heard about the shadowy world of data brokers who buy and sell information to actors they’ve never heard of, for purposes that they can’t see or control, in ways that may risk their privacy and security.

And they may have a greater appreciation for the need for consistency across the country — not a patchwork of 50 different state laws, but a law that organizations and people can rely on as they go about their daily lives

There is a range of views when it comes to technology and technology regulation. But when it comes to national privacy regulation, there is a clear consensus: Americans want it.

A Pew Research poll found that 75 percent of people support government regulation of consumer data.

And the absence of a comprehensive federal privacy law has left a vacuum that states are trying to fill by scrambling to pass their own, often inconsistent, laws — a trend that actually risks fragmenting consumer protections.

People are counting on all of us to address this issue — and fast. The good news is that after many years of discussion, today, there seems to be a growing consensus on this. We are starting to see interest from both parties, from many different constituencies. They are coming together on how to do this well.

President Biden in his State of the Union address highlighted the importance of privacy, and there are growing reports that Congress is making progress toward comprehensive privacy legislation. We’ve long supported that goal, and we welcome the forward movement.

When data is misused, when consumers find their trust is misplaced, it hurts not just the whole digital ecosystem, but the potential for future innovation.

And let me be clear: We at Google get it, and we’ve rethought and adapted our own approaches to product development to promote privacy and security.

For example, because digital services should keep your information for only as long as you find it helpful, we introduced auto-delete controls to let you easily delete your location history, web history, and YouTube history.

Try to do that with any other business that holds data about you.

We were the first platform to make it easy for people to download or transfer personal data when they want to switch to other services.

And today, we keep more people safe online than anyone else in the world — because if it’s not secure, it’s not private.

To set new standards for responsible data use, we’ve also done what we do best – built new technological solutions, investing in privacy-preserving technologies.

Privacy-preserving technologies don’t just promote privacy by design, they achieve privacy through innovation. They help us minimize the collection of identifying data. They reduce the risk of data being misused — without undermining the tremendous value that people get from information services.

As an example, at the start of COVID, we had an unprecedented partnership with Apple to develop Exposure Notifications, helping public health authorities supplement contact-tracing. Our North Star had to be designing a system with privacy protections baked in. So we worked with public health officials, privacy experts, regulators, used our most advanced technology to keep data safe, and established strict guidelines – all of which built public trust and adoption, saving thousands of lives.

Now we’ve got a complex business, and we haven’t always gotten everything right, but we’ve learned from those experiences, and we know what’s possible when private industry and regulators work together.

Of course it’s not enough for some organizations to operate responsibly — we need a law that establishes consistent rules and reins in bad actors.

So how do we do that? What’s the best path forward?

We’re not focused on pie-in-the-sky proposals like creating an entirely new agency to regulate all the different uses of digital tools. We don’t want snappy soundbites; we want sound solutions.

The reality is that all companies are becoming digital companies, each with the potential to create new technologies and use information in new ways. We need consistent rules across the economy, and across the country.

Instead of chasing theoretical approaches, we want to support the practical, real-world privacy work already being done by Congress.

Current legislative privacy proposals like the ones put forward by Senators Cantwell and Wicker reflect important areas of agreement on the practical points that matter to people. And we hope they will work closely with Chairman Pallone and Ranking Member McMorris Rodgers to move legislation through the committees expeditiously.

We can build on the work that has already happened in this space, like proposals put forward by Senators Cortez Masto and Fischer and Representatives Stevens and Gonzalez to promote privacy-preserving technologies.

With the right leadership from the White House and leadership in Congress, we can get this done – this year.

So what are the sticking points? Issues like when and how consumers can file suit? The scope of FTC rulemaking? How federal and state laws will work together?

Those issues are debated in some form nearly every time Congress passes new business regulations, including the sectoral privacy laws Congress has already passed. So, none of this is new or unresolvable. With the right working group and some reasonable compromises, these points can be reconciled.

In fact, those conversations are already happening. Of course there has been no shortage of positions when it comes to privacy, ranging from ideas of notice and choice to proposals around new duties of care or loyalty.

One possible finesse would be a responsible data approach that works in practice, across a growing digital economy.

For example, we could start by giving consumers reasonable baseline assurances around transparency and control.

And we could build on that, by requiring responsible data practices — like privacy reviews and data minimization — that could be easy to implement and promote shared processes for protecting people’s data. Norms around good development processes could improve privacy practices for everyone.

But the time to act is now.

A U.S. privacy law would align us all on the privacy measures that people want and promote confidence in U.S. companies and our digital ecosystem.

It would increase trust in U.S. leadership, as we promote cross-border data flows and compatible, pro-privacy, pro-innovation rules around the world.

It would give everyone much-needed clarity and consistency so that organizations spend less time trying to navigate inconsistent rules and more time preventing harm and responsibly innovating – the kind of work that yields research breakthroughs and a stronger U.S. economy.

There’s no question that getting it done will take thoughtful compromises. Compromises by different groups in Congress. Compromises by advocates. And compromises by companies, including Google, who are used to doing business in certain ways. But that’s what we need to get this done.

Whatever final legislation comes out of the negotiations won’t be perfect, and it won’t address every concern. But we urge both businesses and advocates not to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Or of better, more consistent protections for all Americans.

In closing, I’ll say this: Google is an engineering company — and we look at problems from an engineering perspective. When we spot an issue with our services, we make fixing it a priority, and we often move engineers from other projects to help.

This is that all-hands-on-deck moment for privacy.

The vast majority of Americans want a federal privacy law. In fact, we’ve never seen such broad-based, bipartisan consensus about the need for that law.

It’s a moment for Congress to come together, on a bipartisan basis, and deliver for the American people.

Lawmakers and regulators face an important challenge, and an important opportunity. We pledge our support for that effort, and we hope that a broad cross-section of stakeholders will join together in support of their work.