It’s the Abacus International Subscriber Conference and I don’t think I am imagining it, everyone’s in a great mood this year.

President and CEO Robert Bailey (right) kicked off the media briefing this evening with happy news that, according to the latest Abacus Asia Travel Sentiment Survey, 62% of travel agents anticipate a promising industry outlook for the next half year.

Abacus posted an 11% year on year growth in total booking volumes to August, he said. “Of this, the number of travellers has grown by 15% and this trend is expected to continue into the first quarter of 2011.”

This has topped Abacus’ earlier forecast of 3-5% in the first half, he said, hailing the pent-up demand for leisure travel and the return of corporate travel.

Travel agents I spoke to echoed similar sentiments. Across Asia, there’s not one market that is not experiencing growth, either inbound or inbound – well, perhaps with the exception of Thailand which is facing inbound challenges, particularly to Bangkok.

Vietnam itself is aiming for a strong recovery this year to hit a record high of five million foreign visitor arrivals in 2010. Last year’s total was 3.8 million last year, a drop of 11%.

On the flight, I read an article in Saigon Times about the potential market for e-services in Vietnam, especially provision of digital content. The country has nearly 30 million Internet users at present, 20-25% of whom join social networking sites.

In May, VTC launched www.goonline.vn, a social networking site owned and developed for Vietnamese. It is aiming for 40-50% of traffic to social networking sites by 2015. In August, it launched Zing Me, another social networking site and according to VNG, the site has attracted 5.1 million members, most of whom are students.

David Tran, CEO of ChuDu 24, Vietnam’s leading online hotel portal, was beaming too when I met him at the welcome dinner. “How’s business?” I asked. “Good, good,” said the fresh-faced young man, who came into travel in 2005 via a career in technology and Internet industries.

“But don’t ask me numbers,” he laughed over a glass wine which, by the way, is good and cheap in Vietnam.

I will attempt to do that, of course, in tomorrow’s plenary session on online travel, which I am moderating.

Mobile will also be a hot topic over the next two days and while Bailey acknowledged there had been a lot of hype about mobile, the time had come for it to truly take off due to the capabilities of today’s mobile devices.

I guess with over 450 million mobile Internet subscribers in the Asia Pacific region, it’s a no-brainer that mobile will be the next big thing. But how travel agents can translate those numbers into new revenue streams is the big question.

Said Bailey, “Eighty five percent of travellers take their phones with them when they travel and it is the number one accessory that travellers have with them. The possibilities for mobile bookings and payments are enormous – from payment for value-added services such as food and beverage, pillows, insurance, onboard entertainment, etc.”

As I walked back from Caravelle to the InterContinental where I am staying for the night, I reflected on Bailey’s words of change – yes, things are changing mightily fast in Asia especially the way consumers are snapping up new gadgets, which is changing social behaviour and consumption patterns.

You see the change in Saigon. When I first came to this city, the most common sight was long-haired girls wearing their ao dai and sitting side-saddle on motorbikes. Today, the young girls have shorn their locks, coloured their hair and are carrying mobile phones as the new status symbol.

Which is why, for the first half an hour of walking on the streets, I decided to snap a few shots of what’s not changed – rather than what’s changed – because even as there is a new 60-something storey skyscraper that’s shot up since the last time I was here, there are still bits of old Saigon remaining. (See photos below)

Tomorrow, I will talk about the changes. Tonight, I will cling on to the present and dream about the past.

Featured image credit (Ben Thanh Market and Quach Thi Trang park by night): Ockra/iStock