There’s some great predictions about the travel industry from the team at Tnooz and these are well worth a read. I’m agreeing with Glenn Gruber on the Tnooz post that there will be a large impact in Travel from Apple, but what I’m surprised nobody focused on is where Facebook will play in all of this.

Already in Facebook I’m seeing a very TripAdvisor like ‘Where I’ve been map’ as part of the timeline and Facebook is continuously asking me about where my photos were taken. I must say they’re pretty damn accurate too with their suggestions.

My prediction is we’ll see Facebook do a lot more in travel themselves, but we’ll continue to see more travel companies, old and new, tap the Facebook graph to provide their users with recommendations from their friends. Facebook Connect will become a hygiene factor.

I can’t predict the future, but there’s a few things I’m thinking about next year based on what I’m seeing already and a few hunches.

• 2012 won’t be the end of the world and there will be more movies about when this might be
• the traffic in Jakarta is going to get a whole lot worse
• Indonesia is going to a huge focus of big travel companies – new hotels, new air routes, renewed airports
• More Indonesian startups are going to be funded
• The travel companies that do really well in Indonesia will be the ones that adapt to local payment methods

We’re already seeing significant movement in terms of Travel in Indonesia with AirAsia announcing another new international entry point with flights from Kuala Lumpur to Semarang. Lion Air has ordered hundreds of new planes and are actively adding new routes. Hotel groups are adding new properties in Indonesia in great abundance.

However 2012 starts off it’s going to be a very exciting year for travel and Indonesia is the place to be!

Saya sudah cukup lama bolak balik ke Indonesia. Pertama kali ke Indonesia saya berumur 13 tahun pada tahun 1993, masih di high school ketika itu. Dan itu tahun kedua saya mempelajari Bahasa Indonesia. Ketika itu saya mengunjungi Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta dan Bali. Meskipun masih muda saya langsung tau bahwa suatu hari nanti saya akan kembali ke Indonesia. Saya katakan kepada orang tua saya bahwa saya akan tinggal di Indonesia suatu saat nanti!

Dari kunjungan pertama itu saya menyadari ada sesuata istimewa di Indonesia. Orangnya, kebudayaannya dan makanannya. Orang-orangnya sangat bangga. Ada kebanggaan tentang ‘being Indonesian’, tentang kebudayaan, tentang tanah air Indonesia, tentang keindahan alam dan lainnya. Kebanggaan ini berarti orang Indonesia selalu senang kalau berbagi tentang negaranya.

Tahun 1994 saya mengikuti pertukaran pelajar di Salatiga selama 5 minggu dan tinggal dengan host family. Enam bulan sebelumnya keluarga saya juga menyambut pertukaran pelajar dari Salatiga di rumah kami (Perth, Australia).

My ex Yahoo! colleague, Dave Chalklen, now at Vocanic wrote an excellent article recently titled ‘Putting the Social back in Indonesia’s media‘ that really highlights what’s going on in the country. His reflections on the market really highlight the current trends and some of the psychology behind them.

Further supporting the popularity and adoption of Foursquare in Indonesia is a recent post from Jaunted.com showing the most popular airports based on Foursquare checkins. No surprise that Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport tops the list of airports outside of the US.

Being a frequent traveller to Indonesia I can also tell you that after checking in at Jakarta airport there really isn’t much else to do! Thankfully there’s word of some major redevelopments happening over the next couple of years! Until then it’s foot reflexology and a beer or two at the Pura Indah Lounge for me!

Taking a slightly different spin on this is Achmad Alkatiri, Community Manager at HolidayIQ Indonesia who has set out on a journey to share a photo of a different destination in Indonesia every day for the next year.

Mad, as he prefers to be known, is helping people discover that there’s more to Indonesia than just Bali, Lombok and Jakarta which is part of my team’s vision for HolidayIQ in Indonesia and we’re all working hard to produce compelling, useful content to help Indonesians discover new destinations around the archipelago.

For those of you who speak Bahasa Indonesia you can follow Mad’s adventures on his blog: madalkatiri.com, but if English is more your thing check out his posts on the Good News From Indonesia blog.

It’s a really interesting read especially considering how fast the internet landscape is changing in the region.

Of particular interest to me is what’s happening in Indonesia. With only 21% internet penetration Indonesia trails the rest of the region in terms of adoption levels, but is a force to be reckoned with in terms of size. The recent MarkPlus Insight Survey quoted some 55 million internet users in the country.

It’s no surprise to anyone familiar with Indonesia that mobile internet usage is huge! Mobile devices have become the dominant, most popular means of accessing the internet in Indonesia with 43% of respondents saying mobile was their main device for internet access.

Indonesia came in third for smartphone ownership as a percentage of the population trailing only Singapore and Malaysia.

At the recent Web in Travel conference held in Singapore I shared my view that Indonesians are still in the communication phase online but this will quickly change as more and more Indonesians go online for media content and then as the market matures more people will start shopping online. Recent developments in the payment space will definitely help move this more quickly.

So what are Indonesians doing online? Messaging on social networks, commenting on social networks, checking out profiles, updating profiles. Oh, and email.

To read more download Nielsen’s Digital Media Habits and Attitudes of Southeast Asia Consumers.

Check out the interview here.