Japan Domestic Travel

Car-centered travel in Okinawa may discourage Generation Z and Millennium Generation to choose Okinawa as a leisure destination, as The Okinawa Development Finance Corporation survey shows 37.7% of them say ‘they do not hesitate to use rent-a-car.'

Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) has launched ‘Second Hometown Project’ to exploit regular travelers to a particular countryside region, subsidizing up to 20 million JPY a project for local governments, DMOs or private business providers.

Visitors to Okinawa Prefecture is expected to reduce by 56% to 3.2 million in FY2021 ended March 31 2022 compared to FY2019, and the prefecture has forecasted to lose nominal GDP of 342.8 billion JPY.

According to NTTCom Research's survey, respondents in favor of restarting Go To Travel accounted for 53.5%, while 6.2% said that they are willing to travel even without it.

Okinawa Prefecture and Okinawa Convention & Visitors Bureau (OCVB) promote to sell Okinawa to Japanese overseas travel lovers as an alternative destination to overseas travel in four categories of ‘America,’ ‘Hawaii,’ ‘Asia’ and ‘Ryukyu.'

DMO KYOTO expects that the occupation rate of 103 hotels in Kyoto City will be recover to 65.5% in November this year, reaching the same level as the Go To Travel month last year.

The total number of guest nights in October 2021 was down 5.5% year on year to 32.6 million, considerably improving from 18.2% reduction in September 2021, and the occupancy rate also improved to 42.1%.

Tokyo Metropolitan Government has decided a supplementary budget of 3.3 billion to subsidize 5,000 JPY a night or 2,500 JPY a day trip to a Tokyo resident who travel in Tokyo.

Jalan research finds the most-imaginable prefecture as an onsen resort is Oita with high popularity to Beppu and Yufuin, followed by Gunma with Kusatsu.

JR East, a Japanese railway company, and Satoyume, a local revitalization business start-up, launched a special-purpose company for ‘Hotels along the line’ project.

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.

Airbnb Japan signed a partnership agreement with Iida City and local DMO South Shinshu Tourism in Nagano Prefecture to explore farm stay in south Nagano area for local revitalization.

57.6% of surveyed companies hope that domestic travel boosting ‘Go To Travel’ program will be restarted within FY2021, and the ratio was 76% among lodging, dining and entertainment service industries.

The latest Jalan Research Center's survey shows that majority is people who intend to travel, but still wait and see, even though vaccination has been extending nationwide.

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.

The occupation rate of 100 hotels in Kyoto City is expected to recover to 52.6% in November this year from 27% in September due to higher domestic travel demand after declaration of a state of emergency was lifted.

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.

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.

11 travel companies join the government-leading ‘vaccination and test package’ demonstration for their selected 38 tours departing mostly from Tokyo to a variety of destinations nationwide.

Since declaration of a state of emergency related to COVID-19 in Japan was lifted, travel and transportation companies have seen good signs for demand recovery. How are their businesses changing?