Travel Sectors

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.

JAL has decided to begin serving daily flights between Haneda and Doha, Qatar on March 31 2024. JAL will become the first Japanese airline serving direct flights to a Middle East city.

JTB and Asahi Breweries, a Japanese leading brewery company, have started a collaboration project to create high-quality entertainments and tourism services in the nighttime for inbound travelers.

ANA has revised upward the full-year financial forecast for FY2023 ending March 31 2024 because it has successfully earned higher-fare passengers on international flights and increased leisure travelers on domestic flights.

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).

ANA has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Trip.com Group to increase travelers from China to Japan, opening a flagship shop and deliver LIVE commerce on Trip.com website and app.

To support the Noto Peninsula Earthquake-hit regions, a travel discount program is launched for four prefectures, which will be available from March to late April before Golden Week period starts.

JTB CEO Eijiro Yamakita talked about the JTB’ s business focuses in 2024 and business environment surrounding the tourism industry, pointing out three challenges for the tourism industry: worsening labor shortages, technology support, and sustainability initiatives.

JAL announced that Mitsuko Tottori will take office as new president on April 1 2024. Tottori, who came from a cabin attendant, will be the first female president for JAL.

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.

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism decided not to accept an IR (Integrated Resort) plan applied by Nagasaki Prefecture and KYUSHU Resorts Japan mainly because of the certainty of fund rising.

ZIP AIR, a JAL Group hybrid airline, will begin serving three flights a week between Narita and Vancouver on March 13 2024. One-way airfares are from 101,325 JPY for ZIP Full-Flat Value.

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 Japanese government has decided to approve ride-sharing service partially in April 2024. Firstly, taxi operators can be a ride-sharing operators in particular local areas suffering shortage of taxies.

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%.

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.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China said that visa wavier for 6 countries has been working well, for the first three days, about 7,000 out of all travelers of about 18,000 from those countries entered China without visas.

Hankyu Travel International, a major travel company of Japan, and NAVITIME JAPAN, a navigation app provider, will jointly develop tours for luxury inbound travelers.

NTT Data, a major Japanese data company, will open a capsule hotel specializing in sleep analysis, acquiring, accumulating and analyzing sleep data using infrared cameras, sound-collecting microphones, and body movement sensors.