Nissan Motor, Nippon Travel Agency (NTA), as founders, and other 12 Japanese companies launched ‘Green Journey Promotion Board,’ an organization to promote sustainable tourism in Japan, in order to develop a new travel style ‘Green Journey’ focusing on reduction of CO2 emission in traveling, development of environment-friendly leisure activities and local revitalization in cooperation with Environment Agency and Tohoku University.
The first ‘Green Journey’ tours are organized in Aso City, Kumamoto Prefecture and Shima City, Mie Prefecture, offering a variety of sustainable activity options, such as driving with Nissan EV rent-a-car, environment-friendly activities or farm-to-table foods.
For unique travel experiences, a mini app on LINE was developed for ‘Green Journey’ travelers to enable them to get points at particular places in the tours and to receive local tourism information.
In addition, ‘CONNECT PROGRAM’ is available only for ‘Green Journey’ travelers. The program creates opportunities for travelers to communicate with activity hosts or local people and to touch local cultures and industries. Also, activity hosts deliver messages on the LINE app periodically to keep in touch with travelers even after traveling, which is expected to create ‘the second hometown’ for travelers.
Focusing on cooperations with local communities
Specific ‘Green Journey’ goals include reducing CO2 emissions by more than 20% actually, not just through carbon offsets, through the use of electric vehicles, sustainable cooking, and environment-friendly activities. It is expected that a cumulative CO2 emission reduction from travel will be achieved by 4,771 tons by 2030.
In the future, by adding a variety of companies and organizations such as primary transportation operators and renewable energy operators, the goal is to achieve zero CO2 emissions from domestic travel by 2050.
Furthermore, the organization aims to extend ‘Green Journey’ destinations to 50 areas by 2028 and more than 200 areas by 2030, and provide 10 million people with the ‘Green Journey’ tours by 2033.
“Globally, CO2 emissions from the tourism industry account for 8-11% of the total, with the majority of these generated from travel,’ said Masaaki Kanda, Corporate Vice President at Nissan. “We had an idea to realize a new sustainable tourism. To make the idea come true, cooperation across industry boundaries will be necessary.”
日産の環境対策を説明する神田氏
“Now that domestic travel demand is increasing, it is time to face a variety of challenges and take concrete action to standardize sustainable tourism,” Yoshiteru Koyano, President at NTA said. “We will address to solve local issues such as labor shortages, secondary transportation, and the maintenance and development of cultural industries as well as consideration to environment.”
