Awaji Island Tourist Association and Kobe Tourism Bureau in Hyogo Prefecture signed a comprehensive partnership agreement to encourage tourists to stay there longer by offering local tourism experiences, such as city cultures, arts and foods in Kobe and nature, foods and wellness in Awaji Island. 

Through the joint efforts, they have a goal to increase international guests from 980,000 in 2024 to 2.75 million in 2030.

They are particularly focusing on gastronomy tourism combining local food cultures in Awaji Island and city gourmet in Kobe and also creating highly valued tours including onsen and wellness experiences for luxury travelers. 

In addition, they are working together for training of foreign language speaker guides and development of traffic accesses between the two destinations to form a new tourism brand of ‘KOBE×AWAJI’ as an international destination.