EY Strategy and Consulting (EY Japan) released its latest report titled ‘What does high value-added tourism generate?’ to analyze high value-added travelers’ trends and study influences on local economy. The report seeks a possibility to create new markets or industries when local communities address high value-added tourism involving different players.

Pointing out that over-tourism happens in some areas, Tomotaka Hirabayashi, EY Japan Strategic Impact Unit Partner, explained, “Quality of tourism must be maintained, and the government has a policy to make tourism higher value. We review again what is high value-added tourism and ask what is essence of that.”

How is high value-added travelers defined?

Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) defines a traveler who spends 1 million yen per travel as high value-added traveler. Based on the credit card payment data in 2019, about 120,000 high value-added travelers visited Japan.

The average consumption amount per traveler was 60,000 yen as a whole, while it was 1.52 million yen among travelers who spent 1 million yen or more and skyrocketed to 6.3 million yen among those who spent 3 million yen or more. As they mostly spent money for ‘things,’ Hirabayashi said that it is important to encourage international travelers to spend money for local things or experiences to generate economic benefits. 

Japan Tourism Agency says that high value-added travelers are defined as travelers who prefer to doing beneficial things for themselves through cultural, historical or nature experiences, not only high-spending travelers. Hirabayashi said, “Among those travelers, two big trends of ‘higher intension to wellness’ and ‘interests in traditional industry and historic culture,’ both of which are Japan’s, especially local regions’ strengths.” 

How should local communities approach high value-added travelers? 

The report refers to Japan’s potentiality and possibility to generate good circulation of local economy in the two trends. Hirabayashi said, “It is essential for a local community to think why high value-added travelers want to visit there and experience the locality and to exploit and build one of a kind experience.”  

In addition, Hirabayashi stressed that value of people is very important, “People-based approach possibly allows local communities without special contents to be a high value-added destination.” In this sense, people are not only tour guides as an entrance to a community but also local artisans, writers or researchers. 

“Their specialties can be power to exploit new values in local resources. High value-added tourism can be joined not only by the tourism industry but also any kinds of players in different fields,’ Hirabayashi said. “With the effort, it is possible to create a new market or a new industry.” 

Travelers internalize their experiences in traveling and apply them to their daily lives and work. They may want to revisit there if they want to reassess it, or recommend its value to others. Hirabayashi said, “The cycle generates economic benefits in local regions, and  motives local people to be prod of their communities again and to try to raise local values.”