News

How did foreign media in Japan see Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics in the last summer? Tokyo Convention & Visitors Bureau (TCVB) issued a summarized report.

The number of Japanese overseas travelers were 512,200 in 2021, down 83.9% over 2020 or down 97.4% over 2019 (20,080,669).

The number of international arrivals in Japan in 2021 was 245,900, down 94% over 2020 (4,115,828) or down 99.2% over pre-COVID-19 2019 (31,882,049), according to JNTO.

Japan Business Federation or Keidanren summarized a proposal titled ‘Innovation to sustainable and resilient tourism' to seek ‘autonomous tourism,’ ‘new-typed tourism’ and ‘sustainable tourism.'

Mastercard and Wakayama Prefecture signed a five-years strategic partnership agreement for tourism promotions and DX, such as cashless or contactless payment system, for smaller businesses.

Sales of 45 major travel companies decreased by 13.7% year on year to 170 billion JPY in total in November 2021. Sales in domestic travel were down 16.5% year on year to 160.9 billion JPY (down 37.9% over two years ago).

According to JTB Tourism Research & Consulting survey, the ratios of people who have been motivated to visit Japan by Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics were 6% in China, 30.2% in U.K. and 26.7% in Australia.

According to Japan Finance Corporation (JFC) survey, 49.5% of lodging providers answered that purchase costs rose, and 69.2% said that they could not pass on the costs to sales prices.

Hiroyuki Takahashi, who took office as Japan Association of Travel Agents (JATA) Chairman in December 2021, said at a New Year press conference, “My priority mission as JATA chairman is regeneration of tourism.”

The top internet service was Yahoo! Japan with the reach rate of 68.9% a month, followed by Goggle with 65.1%, according to Nielsen Digital’s ‘Tops of 2021: Digital in Japan’ ranking.

The total number of guest nights in November 2021 was down 3.8% year on year to 35.3 million, and the occupation rate was 46%, 0.7 higher points than a year ago than November 2020 or 20 lower points than November 2019.

JR EAST launched ‘JR TIMES,’ an travel information site exclusively for Taiwanese travelers for the future, offering a cross-border EC function to sell limited local products in Japan.

JAL drew up the FY2021-FY2025 midterm management plan, for which one of business pillars is ‘ESG Strategy.’ Aiming at net zero emission in 2050, JAL is developing three arrows including expansion of flights using SAF.

HIS posted a net loss of 50 billion JPY for FY2021 ended October 31 2021, doubling from the previous fiscal year. Hideo Sawada, HIS President said. “We expect that overseas travel demand may begin recovering the next summer.”

A new hotel with onsen will be opened inside of a new baseball stadium ‘ES CON Filed Hokkaido’ for Japanese professional baseball team Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters.

WiT Japan & North Asia will be organized on January 14 and 15 2022 for the first time in the past two years. Kei Shibata and Aya Aso, WiT organizers, talked about highlight sessions they are interested in.

90% of hotels and ryokans in Japan said that they should address SDGs, and 38.3% answered that they have already started to take some actions for SDGs. 32.8%, however, said that they have not addressed SDGs yet.

The latest Jalan Research Center’s survey finds that the travel willingness rate as of November 2021 reached 67.7%, the highest rate since the survey began in March 2020. ‘Waiting and seeing the next travel,’ however, accounted for 46%.

According to NTTCom Research's survey, respondents in favor of restarting Go To Travel accounted for 53.5%, while 6.2% said that they are willing to travel even without it.

Okinawa Prefecture and Okinawa Convention & Visitors Bureau (OCVB) promote to sell Okinawa to Japanese overseas travel lovers as an alternative destination to overseas travel in four categories of ‘America,’ ‘Hawaii,’ ‘Asia’ and ‘Ryukyu.'