Japanese Travelers

Europe Travel Commission (ETC) has been developing promotions in Japan to recover Japanese tourists to Europe as soon as possible amid several challenges, appealing sustainable tourism including gastronomy and railway.

JTB will start receiving applications for hospitality packages of Major League Baseball (MLB) opening games of Los Angeles Dodgers vs San Diego Padres in Seoul. A 4 days and 3 nights package for two games is offered at 728,000 JPY a person.

Narita International Airport passengers in 2023 was up 12% year on year to 32.7 million, out of which international flight passengers were up 77% to 25 million. Inbound travelers were up 270% year on year to 16 million (down 12% over 2019).

JTB Tourism Research & Consulting reported the survey results about usage of smartphone and travel spending in Japan. SNS is widely used not only for consumption-related information but also for news or current affairs.

The number of Japanese outbound travelers was down 52.1% to 9,624,100 in 2023 compared to 2019, though the result was about 3.5 times more than 2022.

HIS launches a new service for group travel, working together with Hawaii Tourism Authority and Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, offering ‘Malama Hawaii’ program on SDGs or regenerative tourism.

Japan Association of Travel Agents (JATA) is focusing on revival of outbound travel, regarding several anniversary events as good opportunities, and has an idea to support tourism in Hokuriku area that has catastrophically damaged by Noto Peninsula Earthquake.

JTB has forecasted that the number of Japanese travelers in 2024 are expected to reach 287.5 million, and the number of inbound travelers will reach the most-ever 33.1 million, 31.3% more than a year ago or 3.8% more than 2019.

The number of Japanese overseas travelers was down 37.5% to 1,027,100 in November 2023 compared to the same month of 2019.

In this coming New Year holiday period (December 28 2023 to January 3 2024), ANA has received 1.9 times more bookings for Hawaii than a year ago, and JAL has increased bookings for Europe by 34%.

According to NAVITIME Japan, a Japan’s leading navigation app, the most-searched tourist spot in 2023 was ‘Universal Studio Japan.' For foreigners, the top was ‘Fushimi Inari Taisha' in Kyoto.

Sales of 43 major travel companies in October 2023 were down 22.9% to 347 billion JPY compared to the same month of 2019. As sales of both domestic and overseas package tours were largely down, a trend to shift from group travel to FIT seemed to be strong.

The ratio of respondents who plan to travel overseas within a year was 40%, higher than 28% in the previous survey a year ago, according to the Sony Bank survey. The top concern was ‘exchange rate’ at 72%.

JTB forecasted the total number of Japanese travelers would be up 5% year on year or down 5% over 2019 to 28.6 million during this coming New Year holiday period. Domestic travelers are estimated at 28 million, and Japanese outbound travelers at 580,000.

Japan and U.S. signed a memorandum of cooperation designating 2024 as the ‘U.S.-Japan Tourism Year’ to strengthen tourism and business exchanges between U.S. and Japan, hoping to return Japan to the number two spot in terms of number of visitors to U.S.

‘Symposium on Japanese outbound travel promotion’ at Tourism EXPO 2023 in Osaka focused on how the outbound travel market should be boosted, introducing market analyses by Spain, Malaysia and Thailand.

According to an Expedia survey, about 30% of Japanese respondents answered that if they were able to travel without considering the cost, they would "like to travel abroad” in the period.

the total amount of Japanese travel consumption was up 15.7% year on year to 6.3 trillion JPY in the 3rd quarter of 2023 (July to September 2023). Travel spending a travel per traveler was up 3.3% year on year to 44,361 JPY.

Guest satisfaction rates in Japan were down 30 points for mid-scale hotels and 19 points for economy hotels in 2023 compared to the previous survey, mainly affected by price hikes. Top up-scale hotel is Hilton.

The number of Japanese overseas travelers was down 43.6% to 937,700 in October 2023 compared to the same month of 2019. The reduction rate was unchanged in the recent three months.