DMOs

Uber Japan partners with Kaga City, Ishikawa Prefecture, for a ride-sharing service by a local government. 14 local residents who have passed training courses by Daiichi Koutsu Sangyo initially started the service as drivers.

the occupancy rate of 111 hotels in Kyoto City in June 2023 was down 4.3 points over May 2023 or up 22.2 points over June 2022 to 76.5%. The ratio of international guests was 51.2% of the total.

The latest JTB survey on DX finds that 43% of DMOs or local governments want to use TikTok or GoogleMyBuisness as tools to delivery information.

Japan Tourism Agency instructs how local tourism players should promote digital transformation in four pillars, showing the future vision, the current challenges, how to solve issues and also KPIs in FY2027.

Nissan, one of the leading automobile companies in Japan, tied up with ‘Clan PEONY Tsugaru,’ a local DMO in Aomori Prefecture, to test use of ‘NIssan Caravan’ as an easy camping car for city tours.

Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO)'s survey finds that potential visitors to Japan are estimated at about 330 million out of the total population of 4.5 billion in 22 focus markets. About 40% of overseas travel experiences in Taiwan and Hong Kong have visited Japan four times or more.

JNTO announced results of its research on how Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics affected foreign people’s willingness to visit Japan, and ‘higher value-added travel,’ ‘sustainable tourism’ and ‘adventure tourism’ as its promotional focuses.

Okinawa Prefecture and Okinawa Convention & Visitors Bureau (OCVB) promote to sell Okinawa to Japanese overseas travel lovers as an alternative destination to overseas travel in four categories of ‘America,’ ‘Hawaii,’ ‘Asia’ and ‘Ryukyu.'

Universal Studio Japan (USJ), Osaka Convention & Tourism Bureau and The Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry have signed an agreement on tourism regeneration in Osaka to draw up tourism vision and strategy.

Japanese guests in 100 hotels in Kyoto City were up 30.4% in August 2021 compared to a year ago or down 20.6% compared to two year ago. DMO KYOTO has foreseen that the occupancy rate will rise in November, the autumn leaves month, due to ease of travel restriction.

DMO KYOTO has developed ‘Visit Intent Index’ to measure tourists’ intents to visit Kyoto in a quantitative way. In December 2020, both of actual visitors and the visit intent index dropped to 60.7 and 67.1 because ‘Go To Travel’ program was tentatively suspended amid re-spread of COVID-19.

Akiko Yoshida, new Executive Senior Vice President at JNTO, talked about what JNTO can do now amid no inbound travel demand. Looking at the future, JNTO helps local communities create higher quality tourism contents.

Kyoto City delivers ‘Stay Home, Feel Kyoto’ movie contests to let people staying home enjoy unique history and cultures of Kyoto, such as Zen meditation lesson.

In response to spread of the novel coronavirus over Japan, the Japanese government hammered out the second emergency package valued at 1.6 trillion JPY, including a special loan package for small and middle-sized companies.

Setouchi DMO and Kyushu Tourism Promotion Organization signed an agreement on partnership for inbound travel promotions on September 2 2019.

The Japanese government has decided to clarify roles of local DMO and Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) as NTO (national tourism organization) for the inbound tourism policy to achieve the government’s goal of 60 million international visitors.