Japan Domestic Travel

The total amount of Japanese travel consumption was up 131% year on year to 5.3 trillion JPY in the 3rd quarter of 2022, which improved from a 26.9% reduction in the previous quarter.

Japan Tourism Agency opened a special website to search benefited travel products for weekdays as one of “One more night in weekday’ campaigns.

Japan Tourism Agency announced that the nationwide travel discount program will be extended to December 27 2022 (checkout on December 28) from originally December 21 2022 and to even the next year despite smaller discount rate.

‘Leisure White Paper 2022’ in Japan says that domestic leisure travel dropped from top in 2019 to 4th in 2020 and to 6th in 2021 among major leisure activities, and travelers reduced from 33.9 million in 2020 to 32.2 million in 2021.

JR West Innovations and Nippon Travel Agency (NTA) are working together to create a helicopter tour product in order to improve social acceptance of the future ‘flying car’ service.

The total number of Japanese guest nights in September 2022 (provisionally) was up 70.5% year on year to 38.3 million, which were 5.4% fewer guests nights than the same month in 2019. The occupancy rate was 46.9% overall.

JTB Communication Design and Terra Motors agreed to a business partnership to establish a sustainable EV-charging and tourism infrastructure and a tourism platform to provide tourist information and services in the neighborhood.

The Japanese government will kick off a nationwide travel discount program and an event discount program on October 11 2022. The program will discount by 40% a traveler a night.

Singapore-based OTA Agoda has been raising its presence in the Japan market. A leader of the OTA in Japan talked about its unique strategies both for domestic travel and for inbound travel.

ANA Group will resume the number of domestic flights, combined Peach Aviation flights, in the latter half of FY2022 to the pre-COVID-19 level. Peach will resume daily Haneda-Seoul (Incheon) services on October 30 2022.

The latest JTB Tourism Research & Consulting survey shows that the ratio of ‘planning to domestic travel within the next year’ was slightly up 1.9 points from the previous survey in March 2022 to 41.1%. Regarding criteria to travel, 33.9% said that they want to travel on their own judgements.

Okinawa Convention & Visitors Bureau (OCVB) encourages travelers to use public transportation without rent-a-car as a new trip way in Okinawa.The renewed site introduces model courses or trip itineraries.

All of top 5 Japanese OTAs increased by 1.5 times or more in the first quarter of FY2022 (April to June) compared to a year ago. Top OTA was jalan.net with 13.7 million users increasing by 71%.

Japanese domestic traveler’s mindset is changing to ‘I may as well choose better travel’ amid rise in cost, according to Jalan Research Center's survey. The ratio of domestic overnight travelers was 34.1% in FY2021, 2.9 higher points than FY2020.

The most-satisfied prefecture in domestic travel was Wakayama, rising from 8th in the previous survey, followed by Okinawa as 2nd and Mie as 3rd. The most-attractive prefecture for local foods was Fukui, followed by Ishikawa and Toyama.

JTB has begun selling a sustainable flight tour to Goto Islands in Nagasaki Prefecture, using Oriental Air Bridge aircraft with the Euglena bio-jet fuel ‘Susteo’ refueled.

The Japanese government has decided to postpone “Nationwide travel support program’ due ti surge of COVID-19 BA.5 cases, though it was originally expected to start in early July, but Prefectural discount support program is extended to the end of August.

ANA, JAL and three regional airlines in Kyushu of Amakusa Airlines, Oriental Air Bridge and Japan Air Commuter have developed a joint demand-boosting campaign to give the three regional airlines’ tickets or local or original products.

JTB has forecasted that the number of Japanese domestic travelers in this summer vacation period (July 15 to August 31 2022) is expected to reach 70 million, 75.9% more travelers than a year ago or just 3.3% fewer travelers to the same period 2019.

The total number of Japanese guest nights in May 2022 (provisionally) was up 81% year on year to 37 million, 11% fewer guests nights than the same month in 2019, and the occupancy rate was 46.7% overall, higher than 43.2% in April 2022.