Japan Tourism Agency released the final report on empty-hand travel in Japan, supported by EY Strategy and Consulting. The survey focuses on how empty-hand travel can raise experience values of international travelers and also is effective to avoidance of over-tourism.
The report visualizes nine main travel routes of visitors to Japan by integrating and analyzing data from the Japan Tourism Agency, location data (FF-Data: Flow of Foreigners-Data), and private sector data.
According to the monitor tour tests, the empty-hand travel service allowed a traveler to add 1.3 to 1.5 hours in Kanazawa, about 1 hour in Osaka or 30 minutes to 1.2 hours in Hiroshima for leisure activities.
While 35.9% of travelers were unaware of hands-free sightseeing services, the satisfaction rate among those who actually used them was extremely high at 94.3%. Regarding services that travelers would like to use, "airport/accommodation delivery" was the most popular at 64.6%.
On the other hand, the top reason for not using these services was ‘I don't know what the service is (26.8%),’ which means that awareness is still one of challenges to expand the service.
