The Japanese government accepted Tourism White Paper 2021 that contains analysis of influences on the tourism industry from COVID-19 from a wide variety of viewpoints and also challenges and concrete solutions for tourism revitalization in the future.
The Paper Chapter II reveals that guest nights for ‘Go To Travel’ domestic travel boosting campaign totaled 87.8 million at least for the six months from July 2020 and December 2020, the month it suspended tentatively, and the government paid 539.9 million JPY at least in total.
The average guest nights were 1.35 a travel, and one night accounted for 82%. The most users were found in a price range between 5,000 JPY and 10,000 JPY a night.
The Chapter II also mentioned changes of tourist trends, such as increases in micro tourism travelers, which means travelers to neighboring areas or in a living prefecture, in partners or married couples as travel companies and in individual travels.
In addition, more travelers who stayed in a particular place for Workcation or outdoor activities and who avoided busy times or destinations were seen. Spread of online tours encourages participants to raise their motivations to plan the future travels and to buy local products.
The Paper includes the JTB Foundation’s survey results that the ratio of people who want to travel more frequently than before has been increasing since July 2020, particularly among young generations from10s to 30s.
DX is required for the accommodation industry
The Chapter II clarifies the current challenges and required solutions for the tourism industry.
Major challenges in the domestic travel market are short nights, difference of travel consumption by month and lower productivity in the accommodation industry than the average in all of the industries. The Paper points out that production facilities are not optimized in the accommodation industry, and therefore they fail to raise value-added productivity.
As concrete measures against the challenges, the Paper emphasizes creation of new services and improvement of labour effectiveness through digital transformation (DX), creation of new experience contents, training of tourism professionals, acceleration of sustainable tourism, promotion of adventure tourism and involvement of DMO in local tourism strategy.
