Travel Sectors

The Japanese government has decided that international visitors to Japan from designated low-risk countries and regions will be exempted from arrival test and quarantine on June 1, raising the entry ceiling from 10,000 entries a day today to 20,000 entries a day.

Japan Tourism Agency will develop a pilot program to restart receiving leisure-purpose inbound travel by the end of Mayto draw up a guideline for tour operators and accommodation providers.

Tourism-related organizations, including Japan Association of Travel Agents (JATA) and Japan Travel and Tourism Association, ANA, JAL and JR Group together requested ease of travel restrictions to Tetsuo Saito, Minster of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

ANA will increase Haneda-Honolulu services in this summer, adding Narita-Honolulu flights with A380 nicknamed as FLYING HONU on July 1.

ANA and JAL considerably increased passengers and rose the load factors on both domestic and international flights for this year’s Golden Week holiday period.

HIS launched ‘HIS Farmers,’ a farm company to cultivate and distribute agriculture products, starting cultivating tomato in Hasuda City, Saitama and grapefruit in Nichinan City, Miyazaki.

Kinki Nippon Tourist or KNT will restart selling its dynamic package tours for Guam and Hawaii on May 17 2022.

JAL Group succeeded in increasing revenue and shrinking deficits considerably for FY2021 through its thorough cost reduction efforts and growth of the international cargo business. It has forecasted to end in the black for FY2022.

ANA X, an ANA Group company for an online platform business, has tied up with Singapore-based OTA Agoda to launch ‘ANA World Hotel, ’offering more than 1.5 million hotels in the world.

HIS has started offering ‘RE:TRAVEL SUPPORT,’ a package of nine services to support Japanese overseas travelers, including bookings of PCR tests before departure overseas and return to Japan.

Japan Association of Travel Agents (JATA) announced guidelines for travel companies to restart performing overseas travel tours, including criteria to suspend a tour and to collect cancellation fee.

ANA Holdings ended FY2021 ending March 31 2022 with much better business results than a year ago, increasing sales and improving deficits, as a result of more thorough cost management to reduce fixed costs.

Restarting to sell package tours to Hawaii since early April this year, major travel companies of Japan have increased overseas travel bookings for this coming summer, which seems to give consumers a message of ‘reopening of overseas travel.'

ANA X and ANA Business Jet, ANA Group companies, have joined ‘Travel concierge services for luxury travelers’ program to launch ‘nfinity,’ a travel concierge brand, which is engaged in development of unique and rich experiences.

ANA and JAL have remarkably increased their international flight bookings for this coming Golden Week. JAL Hawaii flights have already been full on several days during the period.

ZIP AIR Tokyo, JAL Group LCC, will serve daily flights between Narita and Honolulu during this year’s summer vacation period to meet expected higher demand.

JTB has decided to restart sending LOOK JTB MyStyle tours to Hawaii on April 28, followed by HIS on May 1, as Japanese government lowered the COVID-19-related travel warning from Level 3 to Level 2 for U.S.

The Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry (TCCI) Tourism Committee compiled requests for tourism recovery in Japan, including effective operation of ‘Go To Travel’ and extension of the program.

Tourism Australia (TA) has started developing a large scale of advertising campaign in Japan to appeal tourism attractions to be selected as the next leisure destination in accordance with ease of travel restrictions into Japan.

Sales of 1110 travel companies in Japan reduced by 71.2% to 724.2 billion JPY in total in 2021 from 2,519.7 billion JPY in 2020. Compared to 2019, the total shrank to one-third of 2,771 billion JPY.