News

Presidents of NTA, JTB and KNT-CT talked about the future travel at JATA Online Travel Mart 2020 Forum, expecting that overseas travel will be resumed as soon as possible. They discussed demand decentralization, digitalization, workcation and so forth.

Japanese overnight travel performance rate on its travel booking site jalan.net dropped to the lowest ever of 53.6% in FY2019 ending March 31 2020, largely affected by COVID-19 in March 2020. Overnight travel expenses were down 6.1%.

ANA Holdings posted operating loss of 159 billion JPY and net loss of 109 billion JPY for the first quarter of FY2021 ending June 30 2020, unprecedentedly reducing both domestic and international passengers under the COVID-19 crisis.

The ratio of ‘no travel plan’ for this summer vacation accounts for 62%, and even domestic travel planners reduce by 22.1 points year on year to 26.6% maybe because many people still worry about spread of COVID-19.

JTB is exploiting Workcation demands in the New Normal age, developing innovative contents in partnership with local governments and communities, amid change of working and life styles in Japan.

HIS has started selling overseas package tour ‘Social Travel’ series with thorough precautions against COVID-19, which will be performed after October 2020 following lifting of the current restrictions in both Japan and destinations.

Amid COVID-19, Kobe Tourism Bureau has begun selling smart phone-based the city tour pass to support the local tourism industry and to promote contactless tickets for travelers.

Visitors to Japan from South Korea, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong were only 460 in June 2020, 100 from South Korea, 300 visitors from China, 50 from Taiwan and fewer than 10 from Hong Kong.

Google illustrates new search trends in Japan based on Google Trend data by July 11 2020, showing increases in searches of 'Near XX,' 'Summer vacation, what happens,' ‘light camping car' or ‘rental house.'

Universal Studio Japan (USJ) in Osaka lifted the entry restriction completely on July 20 2020, allowing guests nationwide to enter the park managed under New Normal rules.

The Japanese government has decided to start talking with 12 designated countries and regions in Aisa for restart of bilateral travels in preparation for precautions against flow of COVID-19 into Japan.

The prefecture attractiveness quotient ranking 2020 shows that Okinawa is selected as No.1 prefecture in four theme categories. No.1 local food prefecture is Ishikawa.

AB-ROAD Research Center survey shows that ANA and JAL sweep the passenger satisfaction in all categories as well as overall. Singapore Airlines is ranked 3rd overall, dropping from 1st last year.

Japanese overseas travelers was down 99.3% year on year to 10,700 only in June 2020, and the half-year total reduced by 68.7% to 2,990,400.

International visitors to Japan was down 99.9% year on year to 2,600 in June 2020.Visitors from all of the 22 JNTO ’s targeting markets were almost zero for three months in a row.

The Japanese government has decided to exclude travels from/to Tokyo for the government's leading domestic recovery campaign 'Go To Travel' because of an increase in COVID-19 cases in Tokyo.

The Mastercard survey finds that 40% of Japanese intend to reduce shopping opportunities at real stores’ amid COVDI-19, and the ratio of ‘reducing payment by cash' reached 41%.

The total number of guest nights was down 84.8% year on year to 78.1 million in May 2020, 7.67 million Japanese guest nights (-81.6%) and 140,000 international guest nights (-98.6%).

JTB has launched New Normal-based corporate incentive travel to give a travel product gift to an individual employee, not conventional group travel, amid COVID-19 crisis. An employee can use the travel gift whenever he or she wants to go.

The number of bankruptcies in the hospitality industry of Japan were up 2.4 times to 72 cases year on year, out of which the COVID-19-related bankruptcies reached 32 cases, including Royal Oak Resort with a debt of 5 billion JPY.