Why Asia Is Still the Future of Travel in a Post-Coronavirus World

I started thinking about this interview series for Skift as a way to give a bigger historical and geopolitical perspective on the crisis in the global travel industry due to coronavirus and a potential economic downturn coming. One of the first people I thought to speak with, and who understood the new Asia and what it means to the world, was Parag Khanna, author and geopolitical scientist who has written extensively — including articles and multiple books — on the changing centricity of the world. Coronavirus and many previous global virus outbreaks have come through Asia, and he understands what that means in a very interconnected world, and what that means to travel. I called him up this week on WhatsApp, and we chatted through the 13-hour time difference between me in New York City and Khanna in Singapore, a fascinating interview as you will read below. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Skift: You've been a big proponent of Asia as the new center of the world. What does this crisis change?

You're in Singapore — has the quarantine officially lifted?

Parag Khanna: Well, there actually wasn't a formal quarantine on Singapore per se. It's just that there are some countries that are requiring that if you have traveled from Singapore to that place, you have a mandatory quarantine in that destination of 14 days. Singapore did that, of course, to anyone arriving from certain cities in China. So all in all, that was the micro phenomenon. Only people who were genuinely suspected of having the virus or had reasonable, probable cause based on their travel history were actually quarantined. So it's very important to note that quarantining has been — and should be — by and large a micro-individualized phenomenon based on circumstances rather than some kind of tax or penalty on entire peoples based on their nationality. Now I'll add what you're doing with this [Skift Coronavirus] liveblog, providing up-to-the-minute information and transparency is so important in making sure that we don't further harm ourselves economically by penalizing entire swathes of the human population when there's very little likelihood that they are infected. [caption id="attachment_382251" align="alignright" width="220"] Courtesy of Parag Khanna.[/caption] The more transparency we have, and whether it's the geolocation of microclusters or whether it is being able to trace people's travel history and interactions, and