JTB carried out an awareness survey to research domestic travel trend in Japan amid the pandemic, targeting 2001 respondents who experienced domestic travels between 2019 and February 2021.
The survey results show that the ratio of ‘married couples or partners’ as a traveling company was up 4.4 points to 33.1% in 2020 compared to 2019, and also the ratio of ‘traveling alone’ up 3.9% to 17.1%. On the contrary, the ratio of ‘friends’ was down 3.8% to 9.4%.
報道資料より
About an information source to select a destination, the top was OTA (28.6%), followed by ‘recommendations from friends (18.4%)’ and travel companies’ websites (10.2%).’
The top three-searched places before departure were ‘accommodation (76.9%),’ ‘restaurants (63.7%)’ and ‘sightseeing highlights (69.2%).’ For accommodation, ‘tourist information on OTA (45.8%),’ ‘word-of-mouth websites (23.3%)’ and ‘local tourism association websites (12.7%)’ were popular. For sightseeing highlights, ‘local tourism association websites (26.1%),’ ‘tourist information on OTA (22.4%)’ and ‘word-of-mouth websites (20.4%)’ were more used.
The top three-searched places in a destination were also ‘accommodation (63.4%),’ ‘restaurants (63.0%)’ and ‘sightseeing highlights (61.7%).’ For sightseeing highlights, interestingly, paper information sources, like ‘travel guidebooks or travel magazines (12.9%)’ or ‘booklets by local tourist information (11.8%),’ are preferred.
報道資料より
Popular local activities were ‘onsen or spa (36.6%),’ ‘museum or theme-park (33.7%),’ ‘tourist train or cruise (18.2%)’ and ‘sports, music concert, festival or local event (15.4%).’
Regarding SNS, 26% answered they have posted in traveling, and the ratio was higher in 2020 than in 2019. The most-posted contents were ‘sightseeing highlights (45.6%)’ and ‘foods (45.6%).’ Young females preferred to posting memories with companies (38.5%).
One of trends in the pandemic was that more answers were found in ‘avoiding posting the time of traveling’ and ‘avoiding posting details of a destination.’
