Travel Sectors

Public and private exhibitors for Tourism EXPO Japan Tokyo Business Meetings & Travel Festa deliver messages online because the event was cancelled amid the state of emergency declaration in Tokyo.

The Japanese government has decided to suspend business and residence tracks between Japan and 11 designated countries and regions until February 7 2021 to prevent a new variant of COVID-19 from flowing into Japan.

According to the new DMO guideline, Japan Tourism Agency canceled registrations of seven DMO candidates, while approving registration renewals of all 41 registered DMOs.

Following the the state of emergency declaration until February 7, ANA and JAL will cut additional domestic flights, reducing operation rate to around 56% during the period.

‘Go To Travel,’ the Japan’s domestic travel recovery initiative, was used by 68.5 billion guest nights from the opening day of July 11 to the end of November, and a budget used for the initiative totaled about 406.3 billion JPY at least.

Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo Disney Sea have decided to introduce their first dynamic pricing system on March 20 2021, ranging from 8,200 JPY to 8,700 JPY for an adult one-day passport. The prices vary with seasons or day of week.

The Japanese government accepted a FY2021 budget draft of 40.9 billion JPY, 40% less than the FY2020 budget, for Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) that is focusing on new travel styles including Workcation and promotion of digital transformation for the tourism services as new policies in FY2021.

Sales of 47 major travel companies reduced by 65.7% year on year to 155.6 billion JPY in total in October 2020. Domestic travel were down by 38.7% to 151 billion JPY, improving from from a 62.8% reduction in September, boosted by ‘Go To Travel' that has included Tokyo in October.

HIS will reduce its retail stores in Japan from 259 to 212 in the end of FY2020 and to 154 in Q1 of FY2021, as it posted net loss of 25 billion JPY for the full year of FY2020 ended October 31 2020. Chairman Sawada said “We are trying to regain profit in the latter half of FY2021.”

The Japanese government decided to suspend the domestic travel recovery initiative ‘Go To Travel’ nationwide until January 11 to make all efforts to stop infection spread. Compensation of cancellations for travel operators is up to 50% of the booked travel price.

Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) is developing ‘decentralized travel’ campaign as a New Normal traveling style. Using the special logo, travel operators are developing their original campaigns, creating decentralized travel-themed products and offering reward opportunities.

The JTB survey on travel trend in this coming New Year holidays results find that the ratio of ‘traveling including homecoming’ accounted for 14.8% including ‘probably traveling (6.9%),’ which was 5.2 lower points than a year ago.

JAL will provide all international flight passengers with ‘JAL Corona Cover,’ an insurance service to compensate medical, testing and quarantine expenses for a positive case in traveling, from December 23 2020 to June 30 2021.

Travel Voice has released its original survey report titled ‘Overseas Case Studies on Travel Demand Stimulus Strategies’ to analyze cases similar to ‘Go To Travel’ and ‘COCOA,’ a contact-tracing app, giving a clear picture of comparisons among the governments' initiatives.

JAL has started selling ‘JAL Dynamic Package ‘ tours to motivate living in two regions for Obihiro City (Hokkaido), Toyoka City (Hyogo), Munakata City (Fukuoka) and Aso City (Kumamoto).

JAL Group LCC ZIPAIR sells optional PCR test package to passengers on it Narita-Honolulu flights, which will be launched on December 19, to ensure their travel confidence.

The Japanese government has decided to extend 'Go To Travel' to the end of June next year from originally January 31 2021 and also to receive small group inbound travelers step by step toward Tokyo Olympics next summer.

Users for the Japanese government’s leading domestic travel recovery initiative ‘ Go To Travel’ reached about 52.6 million by November 15. For the half a month by November 15 only, about 8.25 million users increased.

The number of home sharing hosts giving up their businesses reached 7,807 as of November 10 2020, according to Japan Tourism Agency, The major reason is 'Not expecting to make a profit' amid the COVID-19 crisis with a share of 49.1%.

JTB aims to achieve operating profit of 30 billion JPY as early as FY2024 and 45 billion JPY as early as FY2028, for which its new midterm business plan focuses on accelerating the digital-base business for new values and lifestyles services not only relying on people's movement.