News

Domestic travel consumption by Japanese travelers was down 46.5% year on year to 2,694 billion JPY in the fourth quarter of 2020 (October to December 2020), and the yearly total accordingly decreased by 54.9% to 9,898 billion JPY. Travel expenditure was down 9.2% to 33,925 JPY a traveler a trip in 2020.

The awareness of ‘Clubhouse,’ a talked-about audio communication app, is 37% on average, but the rate rises to 47% among 20s. The ratio of ‘I want to use it’ is 14% among 20s, much higher than 5% overall, according to the Cross Marketing’s survey.

JTB Tourism Research & Consulting's survey shows that keys to choose accommodation is ‘thorough hygiene,' ‘dining a private room,' and ‘chartered bath,' all of which are to avoid close contact with others like staying home.

HOSHINOYA Taketomi Island in Okinawa stops serving a bottled water in a room for an environmental reason, desalinating seawater for self-sufficiency of drinking water.

JTB Tourism Research & Consulting Survey notably illustrates that Japanese female seniors were more willing to travel in the last three months of 2020 than before, although those people had been negative about traveling since COVID-19 broke out.

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.