More than 40% of tourism industries in Japan see SNS in foreign languages as the next challenge

The latest survey on promotional activities for the inbound travel market, conducted jointly by NTTCom Online Marketing Solutions and Jissen Women’s University, finds that 48.5% of all respondents regard services for foreign travelers as a top priority (combined ‘if anything, Yes,’ ‘Yes’ and ‘totally, Yes).

Among services for foreign travelers, payment by credit cards (55.4%), guidance in English (53.9%) and website in English (47.7%) are top three services already provided.

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Among the future promotional activities, a share of ‘open of SNS (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) in English’ accounts for 42.1%, and ‘open of SNS in other languages than English’ for 41.5%. In reverse, shares of ‘enhancement of partnership with tourism-related organizations’ and ‘sales activities to domestic travel companies,’ which used to be high on the list, lower to around 30%.

The following tables show promotional activities in progress (left) and future promotional activities (right):

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The online survey was conducted to 747 NTTCom Research monitors including retailers, restaurants, accommodations, transport service providers, sports, entertainments, theaters, medical service providers and so forth during the period from June 25 to July 2 2015.

In Japanese

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