Digital

‘Travelco’ is selected as the most-satisfied meta-search for both air ticket and hotel in Japan, followed by ‘Google Travel,' which is firstly among top five meta-searches.

Hermione Joye, Sector Lead, APAC Travel, Google, talked about search-based travel trends in 2022 in APAC. In Japan, search interests in 'sustainability' is skyrocketing. She also said that travel brands should take advantage of first party data.

Airbnb Japan signed a Workcation agreement with Cabinet Office Okinawa General Bureau to create connections between guests and hosts and local communities in Okinawa to increase relationship and co-education travelers.

Baseball stadium ‘Tokyo Dome,' a home of Yomiuri Giants, introduced the Panasonic’s face recognition system for admission and payment on ‘facethru’ platform provided by Tokyo Dome.

Osaka Prefecture and Osaka City has started offering Metaverse ‘Virtual Osaka,' creating ‘New Cities’ virtually redesigned shopping streets and tourist spots in Osaka City, to appeal Osaka toward EXPO 2025 Osaka Kansai.

ANA has just begun receiving required COVID-19 certifications and other documents for its ANA Travel Ready service on 20 flights on 19 routes in total from Tokyo Haneda and Tokyo Narita to the U.S., Europe and China.

Sharing economy market scale of Japan reached record-high 2.4 trillion JPY in 2021 and is expected to exceed 14.3 trillion JPY in 2030 on the best scenario.

Mastercard and Wakayama Prefecture signed a five-years strategic partnership agreement for tourism promotions and DX, such as cashless or contactless payment system, for smaller businesses.

The top internet service was Yahoo! Japan with the reach rate of 68.9% a month, followed by Goggle with 65.1%, according to Nielsen Digital’s ‘Tops of 2021: Digital in Japan’ ranking.

WiT Japan & North Asia will be organized on January 14 and 15 2022 for the first time in the past two years. Kei Shibata and Aya Aso, WiT organizers, talked about highlight sessions they are interested in.

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism has launched the ‘Pokémon GO’ program in Odawara City to help visitors discover local history by virtually placing poke stops on the game.

JAL has started accepting vaccination record registration in addition to PCR test result on digital health certificate app ‘VeriFly’ for its flights from Japan to U.S.

Tokyo Metro and Bureau of Transportation Tokyo Metropolitan Government started selling all-you-can-ride ‘Tokyo Subway Ticket’ and a package with Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Sky Tree admissions even for residents in the Tokyo Metropolitan area.

Mt.Fuji Area Tourism DX Innovation Consortium including Panasonic begins demonstration tests for ‘free-hand tourism’ in the area by using face recognition digital pass for payments and entries in Fuji Kyuko railway and tourism facilities.

The most used information-gathering tool by Japanese GenZ was SNS (69.8%) in 2021, replacing TV (40.8%) in 2014, and users of mail apps reduced from 64.7% to 42.6%, while users of music and video apps remarkably increased from 39.8% to 70.6%.

one of major travel agencies in Japan, Developing its original vaccination passport ‘Smart Corona Pass,’ working on LINE, Tobu Top Tours will use it for the government-led vaccination package demonstration program.

Shizuoka Prefecture and NEC will test the face recognition system for about 100 participants in trekking tours to Mt. Fuji to check their registered vaccination or negative certificates on the app.

Rakuten, one of largest OTAs in Japan, and Marriott International signed a strategic partnership to enhance collaboration between Marriott Bonvoy and Rakuten membership program.

Okinawa Convention &Visitors Bureau (OCVB) and other organizations will build a tourism data platform to visualize data on tourist needs, movements and consumption for effective delivery of tourism information and expansion of tourist spending.

Airbnb Japan signed a partnership agreement with Tatsuno Town in Nagano Prefecture, in which Airbnb gives financial supports for renovation of old folk houses and trial Workcation.