Japan Tourism Agency reported that travel transactions of 50 major travel agents totaled 498.2 billion JPY (-7.1%) in September 2016, resulting year-on-year reductions for five months in a row. The monthly total consisted of 191.9 billion JPY for outbound travel (-8.6%), 15.2 billion JPY for inbound travel (+17.2%) and 291.2 billion JPY for travel in Japan (-7.1%).
For outbound travel, all of 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 year-on-year reductions. Hankyu moved up from 4th to 3rd again.
For inbound travel, 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 (+35.5%), NTA (+34.5%) and JTB (+25.6%) did better businesses, while H.I.S. lost transactions.
For travel in Japan, JTB reduced monthly ransactions by 17.6% year on year to 80 billion JPY. Rakuten resulted in just 1.7% growth.
Transactions of package tour brand products totaled 148.4 billion JPY in September 2016 (-14.1%) with 3,373,603 customers in total (-8.7%). The total comprised 59.3 billion JPY (-16.9%) with 331,410 customers (-6.8%) for outbound travel, 570.8 million JPY (+3.2%) with 35,712 customers (-4.9%) for inbound travel and 88.6 billion JPY (-2.2%) with 3,006,481 customers (-9.0%) for travel in Japan
According to hearings to travel companies, the outbound travel market was affected by worse holiday sequences than a year ago and the terrorist attack in Nice. The travel in Japan market was also influenced by worse holiday sequences than a year ago and bad weather. In the inbound travel market, travelers from East Asia, Southeast Asia and North America increased.
