Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) announced that sales of 49 major Japanese travel agents amounted to 365.8 billion yen in total in January 2017 (-0.8%), which consisted of 139.3 billion yen for the outbound travel business (+5.2%), 12.5 billion yen for the inbound travel business (+23.8%) and 214.1 billion yen for the travel in Japan business (-5.3%).
For outbound travel, out of the top five travel agents (15 JTB Group companies, five H.I.S. group companies, three Hankyu Travel Group companies, eight KNT-CT Group companies and NTA), Hankyu resulted in double-digit growth. The difference of transactions between JTB group (1st) and H.I.S. group (2nd) reduced to 1.8 billion JPY.
For inbound travel, all of the top five travel agents (15 JTB group companies, five H.I.S. group companies, eight KNT-CT group companies, Rakuten and NTA) resulted in double-digit growths of monthly transactions. H.I.S. group moved up to 2nd for the first time since January 2016.
For travel in Japan, among the top five companies (15 JTB group companies, eight KNT-CT group companies, NTA, Rakuten and ANA Sales), JTB group reduced monthly transactions by 12.4% year on year. Only Rakuten resulted in year-round growth.
Transactions of package tour brand products totaled 108.6 billion JPY in January 2017 (-2.5%) with 2,542,763 customers in total (-6.8%). The total comprised 42.1 billion JPY (+1.9%) with 226,245 customers (-4.8%) for outbound travel, 439 million JPY (+2.7%) with 33,585 customers (+22%) for inbound travel and 66.1 billion JPY (-5.1%) with 2,282,933 customers (-7.3%) for travel in Japan.
According to hearings to travel companies, the outbound travel market was mainly boosted by a positive rebound from the terrorist attacks’ aftermath in Europe a year ago. In the inbound travel market, the Chinese New Year holiday period beginning from late January was a positive reason for the growth. The travel in Japan market was influenced by a negative rebound from the special ‘Furusato’ discount campaign a year ago.
