Japan Tourism Agency reported that travel transactions of 50 major travel agents totaled 600.9 billion JPY (-0.3%) in August 2016, resulting year-on-year reductions for four months in a row. The monthly total consisted of 228 billion JPY for outbound travel (+1.8%), 14.8 billion JPY for inbound travel (+7.2%) and 358.1 billion JPY for travel in Japan (-1.9%).
For outbound travel, 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), Hankyu resulted in double-digit reductions, moving down from 3rd to 4th, while KNT-CT moved up to 3rd with 9.0% increase.
For inbound travel by international visitors, among the top five travel agents (15 JTB Group companies, five H.I.S. Group companies, eight KNT-CT Group companies, Rakuten and NTA), Rakuten resulted in 20% increase, and JTB Group and NTA also increased monthly transactions by 18.6% and 11.7% respectively. H.I.S. and KNT-CT each suffered -17%.
For travel in Japan, JTB resulted in the first over 110 billion JPY in the last five months, and Rakuten also succeeded in increasing transactions by 13.8% to 65 billion JPY.
Transactions of package tour brand products totaled 212.4 billion JPY in August 2016 (-3.0%) with 4,561,720 customers in total (-5.2%). The total comprised 79.2 billion JPY (-1.3%) with 357,019 customers (+8.5%) for outbound travel, 489 million JPY (-12.5%) with 32,778 customers (-1.1%) for inbound travel and 132.7 billion JPY (-4.0%) with 4,171,923 customers (-6.3%) for travel in Japan
According to hearings to travel companies, the outbound travel market was boosted by Rio de Janeiro Olympic and Paralympic and higher demand for Asia and North America. In the inbound travel market, East Asia and Southeast Asia continued being market leaders. The travel in Japan market was affected by typhoons.
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