Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) announced that sales of 49 major Japanese travel agents amounted to 5,566 billion yen in total in FY2016 ended March 31 2017, 2.3% or about 130 billion JPY less than FY2015. The total consisted of 2,037 billion yen for the outbound travel business (-2.4%), 200.5 billion yen for the inbound travel business (+14.0%) and 3,328 billion yen for the travel in Japan business (-3.1%). The growth rate of transactions for the inbound travel business was much lower than 40% in FY2015.
Among top five travel agents in total transactions (15 JTB group companies, Rakuten, eight KNT-CT group companies, five H.I.S. group companies and NTA), only Rakuten and HIS resulted in year-on-year growths. The JTB Group’s transactions totaled 1,480 billion JPY.
For outbound travel in March 2017, among the top five travel agents (15 JTB Group companies, five H.I.S. group companies, three Hankyu Travel Group companies, eight KNT-CT Group companies and NTA), four agents except JTB succeeded in double-digit growths, and H.I.S. was ranked top in March as well as February.
For inbound travel in March 2017, among the top five travel agents (15 JTB group companies, five H.I.S. group companies, eight KNT-CT group companies, Tobu Top Tours and NTA), KNT-CT largely increased transactions by 76.2% year on year, moving up to 3rd. Tobu Top Tours exceeded Rakuten, becoming one of the top five companies for the first time since November 2016.
For travel in Japan in March 2017, among the top five companies (15 JTB group companies, eight KNT-CT group companies, NTA, Rakuten and ANA Sales), all of the companies except JTB resulted in year-on-year growths of transactions.
Transactions of package tour brand products totaled 1,617 billion JPY in FY2016 (-5.7%) with 37,615,726 customers in total (-6.6%). The total comprised 607.8 billion JPY (-6.4%) with 3,157,728 customers (-1.7%) for outbound travel, 7.1 million JPY (unchanged) with 461,208 customers (+7.6%) for inbound travel and 1,002 billion JPY (-5.3%) with 33,996,790 customers (-7.2%) for travel in Japan.
