Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to address the role of tourism to the regional economic
development of Southeast Asian economies. The assessment was accomplished by investigating the state
of tourism development and by determining the drawbacks of tourism industry existed in Southeast Asia.
This paper also explores strategies required to develop tourism collectively in order to achieve gains
through establishing favourable environment and mobilizing endowed strategic resources. The assessment
suggests the need to give attention on formulating transparent objective, implementation and integration of
these objectives into national plans, participation of community people, tourism entrepreneurship and cooperation
and integration of governments in developing tourism. Successfully overcoming the difficulties
of regional tourism development, Southeast Asian tourism industry has the potential to reap benefit from
the economies of scale.
Keywords: Regional tourism, collaboration, policy, strategy, economies of scale, Southeast Asia