Digital

Singapore-based OTA Agoda has been raising its presence in the Japan market. A leader of the OTA in Japan talked about its unique strategies both for domestic travel and for inbound travel.

The most popular travel-related website as of June 2022 was jalan.net, followed by Rakuten Travel and JAL. All of the top 10 sites increased unique users compared to a year ago,.Users of video sharing sites and SNS as travel information sources increased even compared to 2019.

Rakuten survey finds that the most-preferred accommodation cost is ‘8,000 to 10,000 JPY’ a night with the ratio of 23% this summer among Japanese young generation. The most-selected information source is ‘Instagram’ with the ratio of 62.8%,

JTB has launched a social gift service ‘JTB Koto Collection,’ on which a user give travel and local experience plans as gifts on SNS or e-mail.

All of top 5 Japanese OTAs increased by 1.5 times or more in the first quarter of FY2022 (April to June) compared to a year ago. Top OTA was jalan.net with 13.7 million users increasing by 71%.

Hankyu Travel International, a Japanese traditional travel agent, signed a business partnership agreement with AirTrip, a Japanese OTA, to sell overseas travel products for individual travelers reciprocally.

HIS, one of the biggest travel companies in Japan, will launch ‘Web 3.0 Virtual Project’ to offer NFT and metaverse services in a travel space and produce its original virtual liver of 2D or 3D avatars as a new advertising characters.

Fliggy, a travel service platform of Alibaba Group, has tied up with Japanese OTA ‘AirTrip.' More than 20,000 lists on AirTrip will be provided to more than 300 million Fliggy members in China.

AI-based Japanese OTA ‘atta’ released an automatic booking change function, which changes a booked hotel package to cheaper one if the price is cut after completion of the initial booking.

Kyushu Tourism Promotion Organization, JTB and Salesforce Japan signed a comprehensive partnership agreement to promote tourism DX, launching a tourism platform to increase fans of Kyushu and repeaters for sustainable economic growth over Kyushu.

Japanese SNS users are expected to reach 82.7 million by the end of 2022, which account for 82% of the whole population. The most-answered reason for using SNS was to gather information on hobbies or jobs with the ratio of 44%.

Tourism White Paper 2022 clearly states that Japan Tourism Agency aims to reform tourism services and local revitalization by using digital technologies, showing concrete directions to solve the current challenges in the travel industry space.

Nippon Travel Agency or NTA signed a comprehensive partnership agreement with Gaia Link to use ‘Virbela’ metaverse platform for local communities, corporate customers and eduction providers.

Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting survey finds the market scale of online tours in Japan was estimated at 9.56 billion JPY in 2020, growing by 30% a year, and the average payment to a paid online tour was 7,918 JPY a person.

ANA announced ‘ANA Smart Travel,’ an app-based new service to provide an individual passenger with personalized information and services, trying to increase online check-in passengers.

ANA X, an ANA Group company for an online platform business, has tied up with Singapore-based OTA Agoda to launch ‘ANA World Hotel, ’offering more than 1.5 million hotels in the world.

Chineses viewers of the virtual tours connected to cross-border e-commerce on the Alibaba platform, which were broadcasted by Japan National Tourism Organization reached 1.35 million in total.

Private and public players in Kansai area, including Universal Studio Japan (USJ), are jointly developing a collective app ‘Travel Contents APP’ for international visitors, providing public information.

ikyu.com, a luxury accommodation OTA of Japan, launched its original SNS ‘YADOLINK' to create a user community, giving them functions to find high quality stay experiences through posted photos.

Kouraku Japan, a marketing company for Chinese high-end consumers, broadcasted a virtual tourism tour combined with live e-commerce for Kagoshima Prefecture on Alibaba Group’s ‘Fliggy,’