When the rangers assigned to Botum Sakor National Park, sitting in the foothills of the Cardamom Mountains in southern Cambodia, patrolled its lowland forests in 2013, they confiscated more than 3,000 snares, dozens of chainsaws, and dozens of homemade guns in a single year. The numbers are an outcome of a lack of robust policy enforcement, reflecting a national park stripped of meaning and protection, and a local population with few alternatives to the forest's extraction.

Botum Sakor National Park was, on paper, a protected area. In practice, the ecosystem and land had been hollowed out. According to the camp manager Allan Michaud, as much as 77% of the park had been sold off to various concession interests, leaving its biodiversity — home to sun bears, Sunda pangolins, Siamese crocodiles, and clouded leopards — with little institutional shield between itself and destruction. 

The question of what could actually reverse that trajectory led, eventually, to an unlikely answer: a pier on a river with no road attached, and 9 tents that would grow to 12 in 2024.

In Asian hospitality, sustainability and regeneration may often be discussed as though they must fit into a single model. 

But the realities of the region tell a different story. A city hotel in Hong Kong, a regenerative retreat in Sumba, and a mountain resort in Nepal are not solving the same problems in the same way. What they share is a common challenge: how to move beyond “less harm” and toward something more enduring, more embedded, and more regenerative.

For this story, Asia Sustainable Travel spoke directly with Peggy Chan and Christian Sea, two hospitality changemakers working at opposite ends of the spectrum yet pushing toward the same goal. Their insights reveal why the future of sustainable hospitality in Asia will not be built through a single formula, but through multiple, complementary models.

Across Asia, tourism growth is entering a more selective and consequential phase. As overtourism pressures intensify in established hubs, attention is shifting toward peripheral regions — places with cultural and environmental heritage, yet previously excluded from mainstream circuits. 

In these contexts, the question is no longer whether tourism should arrive, but how it arrives, at what pace, and under whose terms. This notion of overtourism versus under-tourism was discussed at length in a recent AST Webinar. 

Two pioneering resorts — Cap Karoso in Indonesia and Zannier Bãi San Hô in Vietnam — show how thoughtful design, local partnerships, and light footprints can redefine what progress looks like. 

Together, they suggest that the next phase of Asian hospitality could be smaller in scale but far bigger in consequence.

Global Hotels in Asia Put Responsible Food Sourcing on the Menu

JW Marriott Khao Lak Resort’s response to addressing food-related emissions and also providing healthy food has been to rebuild its food system from the ground up. 

In April 2024, the resort launched the 27-acre JW Garden, perhaps one of the largest resort farms in Asia Pacific. The project was born from a simple question: What if a resort could grow food to cut imports, slash waste, and enrich its ecosystem, and at the same time create a richer experience for its guests?

From Bangkok to Singapore, designing and operating a sustainable hotel in a city means contending with limited footprints, ever-shifting policies, and relentless pressure on space and resources. Achieving meaningful impact in these compact city centers requires more than good intentions. It demands innovation, discipline, and long-term thinking.

And yet, it is precisely in these high-pressure environments that innovation flourishes.

As population centers and global travel gateways, cities offer hospitality brands not only their toughest test but their clearest opportunity to lead.

In this article, we spotlight three hotels, Pan Pacific Singapore, Grand Hyatt Singapore, and Kimpton Maa-Lai Bangkok that have risen to the challenge. Rather than seeing constraints as deal-breakers, they’ve turned them into design prompts and operational innovations.

Their stories offer valuable lessons in how to embed sustainability into the urban guest experience, not as an add-on, but as a defining feature.

Type “Vietnamese luxury hospitality” into Google or ChatGPT, and the top results still lean toward international names. 

These global names have helped propel Vietnam into one of the most popular travel destinations in the world. Naturally, they also dominate the narrative and expectation of what luxury hospitality should look and feel like in Vietnam. 

A quiet shift, however, is underway.

Across the country, a new class of Vietnamese-owned hospitality brands is emerging, not just as operators of world-class resorts, but as cultural authors reclaiming their own space in the narrative. From the reforested valleys of Mai Chau to the artisan islets of Hoi An, properties like Avana Retreat, Namia River Retreat, The Anam, and Ancient Hue are reframing luxury on their own terms: rooted in people, attuned to place, and driven by purpose.

Only a handful of operators stand out for placing sustainability at the heart of their business. Even fewer succeed in doing so while achieving commercial viability, proving that travel businesses can thrive while centering the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit.

To uncover what sets these trailblazers apart, AST hit the road with Chôm Chôm Travel and Oxalis, two of Vietnam’s leading adventure travel companies. What we found were not just tours, but transformative journeys that are rooted in community upliftment, ecological awareness, and a deep respect for place.