News

Nara Prefecture strengthens gastronomy tourism for inbound travelers, offering specially-arranged tours focusing on sake or local foods in Nara.

According to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) survey to participants in ATWS 2023, the biggest challenge is ‘English skill of guides.’ JNTO also said that A key to send travelers to local regions is revival of direct flights from East Asia.

‘EXPO 2025 Digital Wallet’ service started on November 1 2023 to connect the EXPO with wallet users, nicknaming e-money as ‘MYAKU-PE!' and reward point as ‘MYAKU-PO!’

Four-days ‘Tourism Expo Japan 2023 Osaka/Kansai’ was held with a theme of ‘OPEN THE DOOR TO THE FUTURE,’ from October 26 to 29 2023 to showcase the future of diversified tourism industries in Japan after the pandemic.

Brand Research Institute' survey finds that the most-attractive prefecture was Hokkaido for 15 years in a row, and the most-attractive city was Sapporo for three years in a row.

Spending in Japan by international travelers for the third quarter of 2023 (July to September 2023) was estimated at 1.39 trillion JPY, and the top market was China with 282.7 billion JPY.

The number of Japanese overseas travelers were 1,004,700 in September 2023, marking more than 1 million for two months in a row, but the result was still down 42.6% compared to September 2019.

The number of international visitors in Japan in September 2023 was 2,184,300, recovering to a 3.9% reduction compared to the same month 2019. The largest source market continued to be South Korea with 570,400 visitors.

The Japanese government approved a policy package for measures against over-tourism with three pillars of manner eduction, more international visitors to local regions and joint tourism promotions with local communities.

Shimanami Japan, a local DMO, has started tourism DX demonstration on its app for rent-a-bicycle users in Shimanami area in order to increase local spending by them.

Princess Cruises has started selling Yokohama-based cruises in 2025, serving 17 cruises visiting 34 cities in South Korea and Taiwan as well as in Japan.

Air Aisa X will restart serving four flights a week on the Kuala Lumpur- Sapporo route on December 3 2023.Hokkaido is a popular destination for Malaysians.

MOL Cruises announced that the Japanese cruise operator will begin operating a new cruise ship ‘MITSUI OCEAN FUJI’ in December 2024, expecting to attract senior working people or couples in Japan and even inbound travelers as new customers.

Booking.com released a apology letter to partners regarding delay of payment to partners and explained that it happened in the process of shifting to a new payment system to secure higher security.

Celebrity Cruises will serve four Japan-based cruises in 2023 and expand to 18 cruises in total through 2024, expecting to welcome more than 30,000 passengers on board.

Osaka Convention & Tourism Bureau will install multi-language generative AI ‘Kotozna laMondoI’ with a capability of more than 20 different languages on its official website.

NAVITIME Japan, a navigation app provider of Japan, revealed which cities in Japan is getting popular among tourists from U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Spain and Italy, based on the search results on ‘Japan Travel by NAVITIME’ app.

Okinawa Convention & Visitors Bureau (OCVB) has forecasted that the number of tourists to Okinawa will increase by 44.3% year on year to 8.22 million in 2023. International arrivals in Okinawa are expected to reduce 65.5% to 1.02 million compared to 2019.

JTB published ‘JTB Outbound Travel Report 2023,' saying the outbound travel market of Japan was far from full-scale recovery because of weaker Yen and rise in prices in destinations.

Japan is selected as top 3 ‘next destination’ in all of the 12 targeted APAC markets except India, according to Klook, an experience booking platform. In contrast, 84% of Japanese respondents select Japan as the next destination.