News

Sales of domestic travel of 47 major travel companies in Japan were down by 38% to 128.1 billion JPY, worsening from a 25.8% reduction in November 2020, due to tentative suspension of Go To Travel’ nationwide amid a re-increase in COVID-19 cases.

The top two websites in the travel and transport category were ‘jalan.net' and ‘Rakuten Travel’ in the same manner as a year ago. TripAdvisor, JR East and Yahoo! Travel were among top five, but all of them reduced visitors by around 20% compared to a year ago amid the pandemic.

Klook survey finds that the ratio of people who are unsatisfied with not traveling overseas currently was 36% in Japan, which was lower than 55% on average in APAC.

According to Tokyo Shoko Research (TSR), bankruptcies of travel companies in Japan were just two in January 2021, fewer bankruptcies than a year ago for three months in row, probably because of effective financial supports by the government and banks amid the pandemic.

KNT-CT Holdings announced that it had liabilities exceeding it’s assets by 3.5 billion JPY as of the end of December 2020, sufferring a large scale of cancellations since the the third wave of COVID-19 hit Japan beginning in November.

The total number of Japanese guest nights was down 24.4% year on year to 28.7 million, dropping from a 16.1% reduction in November 2020 obviously because the Japanese domestic travel recovery program ‘Go To Travel’ has been suspended nationwide.

Carstay, a Japanese start-up offering sharing services of travel trailers, has launched ‘Mobile Office’ project to rent a travel trailer as a remote-working space, expecting to meet new needs amid the pandemic.

JTB is accelerating digital-based human-touch services in Tourism, Area Solution and Business Solution fields, shifting its selling channels from retailers or call centers to smart devices-oriented Online Mergers with Offline amid its digital transformation efforts.

Imperial Hotel, Tokyo announced launch of a new service apartment business, for which 99 rooms on the third floor have been renovated, expecting to meet new needs, such as the second working space for corporate executives, business continuity plan (BCP) or the second house for a wealthy class.

The first Playbook for stakeholders is unveiled to show principles in order of time, before your travel, entering Japan, at the games and leaving Japan, and also what you have to ensure all the time, including ‘Do not use public transport unless given permission.'

Odawara Tourism Association in Kanagawa Prefecture has started selling online tour ‘Online Ninja Experience (ONE),' expecting that Ninja will be a tourism content to attract international travelers after the pandemic.

HIS has launched ‘TABIFLEEEEEK,’ a paid membership online community to create new travel services or products with ideas from the travel lover community and to seize demands after the pandemic.

JTB has developed ‘JTB MaaS API Gateway’ as a tourism-oriented MaaS software. The software provides travelers with seamless services from product search, booking and payment to mobility experience through API connection between the gateway and tourism operators’ apps.

JTB is enhancing the tourism platform function through a new partnership with BOUKUN, a TripAdvisor business unit for a management service of local tours or attractions. Also, JTB revealed introduction of ‘OLI’OLI Hawaii app’ for its customers traveling in Hawaii.

ANA Holdings announced the business results for the first none months of FY2020 ended December 31 2020, posting the most net loss ever of 309.5 billion JPY even though the airline benefitted 34 billion JPY from Go To Travel program. Forecast of net loss of 510 billion JPY for the full year is unchanged.

DMO KYOTO has developed ‘Visit Intent Index’ to measure tourists’ intents to visit Kyoto in a quantitative way. In December 2020, both of actual visitors and the visit intent index dropped to 60.7 and 67.1 because ‘Go To Travel’ program was tentatively suspended amid re-spread of COVID-19.

The number of Japanese overseas travelers was down 84.2% year on year to 3,174,200 in 2020, including 33,000 in December 2020 only.

The number of international arrivals in Japan was just 4,115,900 in 2020, which was one tenth of the government’s goal of 40 million for 2020. In December 2020 only, international arrivals were down 97.7% year on year to 58,700.

users of Japanese domestic travel recovery program ‘Go To Travel’ reached about 82.8 million guest nights in total by December 15 2020, using a budget of 484.2 billion JPY at least for the program.

Nippon Express Travel established in 1955 will be dissolved in the end of this coming March despite no debt because of the worsening environment surrounding the travel industry.