Travel medicine evolved as an interdisciplinary field in the late 1980s with an initial focus on travelers from Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand (referred to as “Western” countries) visiting developing countries. The basis of travel medicine was to try to decrease the risks of disease and injury for individual travelers when visiting environments perceived as having excess health risks compared to the home country. Owing to economic growth in large parts of Asia, the number of outbound travelers from this region is dramatically increasing. In 1990, only 50 million Asians traveled abroad, while this number reached 100 million in the year 2000 and 190 million in 2010. 1 The outbound tourism growth rate among Asian travelers is the highest in the world. Thus, travelers from Asia are becoming a major proportion of world tourism. In 1980 less than 10% of international travelers were from Asia. This proportion doubled in 2010 and it is expected to reach 30% in 2030, equal to 500 million. 1 So far, the concept of travel medicine is not well known in Asia among both travelers and health care professionals. Only 21% to 40% of Asian travelers sought pre‐travel health information before their trip; 2,3,4 this proportion being far lower as compared to 60% to 80% in “Western” travelers. 5,6 Recent evidence is even more concerning; only 4% of Chinese travelers who traveled to high malaria risk areas visited a travel clinic before their trip, 7and only 5% of Japanese travelers who traveled to developing countries … Corresponding Author: Watcharapong Piyaphanee, MD, Department of Clinical Tropical Medicine, Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, 420/6 Rajvithi Rd, Ratchathewi, Bangkok 10400, Thailand. E‐mail: watcharapongpiy{at}mahidol.ac.th