News

Fliggy, a travel service platform of Alibaba Group, has tied up with Japanese OTA ‘AirTrip.' More than 20,000 lists on AirTrip will be provided to more than 300 million Fliggy members in China.

Hiroyuki Takahashi, Chairman at Japan Association of Travel Agents (JATA), checked postponement of a nationwide travel demand boosting campaign and claimed elimination of three barriers against cross-border travel.

JTB has forecasted that the number of Japanese domestic travelers in this summer vacation period (July 15 to August 31 2022) is expected to reach 70 million, 75.9% more travelers than a year ago or just 3.3% fewer travelers to the same period 2019.

The total number of Japanese guest nights in May 2022 (provisionally) was up 81% year on year to 37 million, 11% fewer guests nights than the same month in 2019, and the occupancy rate was 46.7% overall, higher than 43.2% in April 2022.

Yahoo Marketing Headquarters gave its insights on the updated travel trend based on Yahoo!JAPAN data at Travel Voice LIVE. The ratio of 50 years old or older who considered traveling as of April 2022 accounted for 44% of all of the age segment, up 5 points over a year ago.

Banyan Tree Hotels & Resorts opened Garrya Nijo Castle Kyoto and Dhawa Yura Kyoto on June 17 2022. Ho Kwon Ping, Banyan Tree founder and Executive Chairman, said , “The new hotels in Kyoto are reflected by local lifestyles. I am sure they will succeed.”

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan lowered the COVID-19-related travel advisories for 34 countries from LEVEL 2 “Avoid unessential travel’ to LEVEL 1 ‘Traveling carefully’ on July 1 2022.

AI-based Japanese OTA ‘atta’ released an automatic booking change function, which changes a booked hotel package to cheaper one if the price is cut after completion of the initial booking.

Watabe Wedding, an offshore wedding company of Japan, has received about 7 times more wedding bookings in Hawaii by Japanese couples in September to November this year than May 2022.

Kyushu Tourism Promotion Organization, JTB and Salesforce Japan signed a comprehensive partnership agreement to promote tourism DX, launching a tourism platform to increase fans of Kyushu and repeaters for sustainable economic growth over Kyushu.

Korea Air resumed two flights a week between Haneda and Gimpo (Seoul) with 737-900ER on June 26 2022, followed by ANA on July 1.

95.6% of Workcation experiences in Okinawa answered that they want to come back again for Workcation. Regarding hurdles for Workcation, the most answers were found in ‘cost.'

AndBeyondTokyo, a Tokyo-based tour operator, run helter-skelter to receive its first international customers after the partial reopening of leisure-purpose travelers from San Francisco. Too many hurdles are still on the road to Japan. What are CEO Kuroiwa worried about?

Japanese SNS users are expected to reach 82.7 million by the end of 2022, which account for 82% of the whole population. The most-answered reason for using SNS was to gather information on hobbies or jobs with the ratio of 44%.

ANA, JAL, JR Tokai, JR East and Tokyo Metro is developing a joint tourism campaign ‘Welcome Back Tokyo,' offering gift opportunities on Instagram and Twitter.

ZIP AIR Tokyo, a JAL subsidiary LCC, will launch Narita-San Jose services in December 2022 as its second U.S. route, giving up ‘Z’ logo on the vertical tail probably because ‘Z’ is recognized as a symbol of Russian forces.

Tourism White Paper 2022 clearly states that Japan Tourism Agency aims to reform tourism services and local revitalization by using digital technologies, showing concrete directions to solve the current challenges in the travel industry space.

Domestic tourism campaign will be extended from within the six designated regional blocks currently to the whole nation in early July 2022, financially supporting up to 8,000 JPY a night for travels using public transportation and up to 5,000 JPY a night for other travels.

Nippon Travel Agency or NTA signed a comprehensive partnership agreement with Gaia Link to use ‘Virbela’ metaverse platform for local communities, corporate customers and eduction providers.

ZIP AIR TOKYO, JAL group’s LCC, will increase its Narita-Singapore service to five flights a week during this summer between July 16 and August 31.