Travel Sectors

Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) has begun digital promotions for ‘EXPO + Tourism, encouraging JNTO website visitors to visit the ‘EXPO + Tourism’ tour booking website, and delivering NFTs featuring nature, foods or cultures in 10 regions.

Japan Tourism Agency of Japan will host ‘Tourism Resilience Summit’ in Sendai from November 9 to 11 2024 to share knowledge about strategies or plans of tourism resilience through symposiums and panel discussions.

Hoshino Resorts announced that the Japanese hotel chain will open Japanese-style ‘onsen ryokan’ in Sharon Spring, New York in 2028 as the first onsen ryokan, targeting wealthy travelers in North America.

Vision, a Wi-Fi router rental company of Japan, launched a travel brand ‘Japan Destinations’ as a destination management company (DMC) to provide seamless arrangement of hotel, activity, transportation and tour guide.

Cruise Planet, a Japan’s cruise travel OTA, launched a BtoB booking system ‘NAVIS’ for travel agents, which enables travel agents to grasp cabin availability at a glance and book available cabins immediately.

Nippon Travel Agency (NTA) and Innovative Space Carrier (ISC) signed a business partnership agreement for ‘space travel business for everyone,' expecting to commercialize the business in 2030s.

ANA will organize ‘Four-days Los Angeles and Victorville Airport tour’ as the second tour of ‘Airplane Graveyard’ series, following Mojave Airport. You can get up close and personal with the many planes that once served the world.

Four-days Tourism EXPO Japan (TEJ) 2024 opened on September 26, 2024 at Tokyo Big Sight, organizing symposiums, seminars, exhibitions and business meetings for outbound travel, inbound travel and domestic travel.

According to the 2nd Japanese Customer Satisfaction Index (JCSI) in 2024, HIS won the highest customer satisfaction in the travel industry for the first time. HIS was top even for recommendation and touching indexes.

The ratio of new tour operators who are affirmative to receive inbound travelers reduced from 51% in the last survey to 44%, according to JATA survey. The top reason was ‘worker shortage’ (61%).

Four-days Tourism EXPO Japan (TEJ) 2024 will open in Tokyo Big Sight on September 26 2026, organizing TEJ Ministerial Round Table, a keynote panel discussion and so on. Exhibitions will be more than 1,500 booths, about 85% of the largest event in 2018.

Resorttrust, a Japanese hotel operation firm, will begin a demonstration program to propose personalized wellness activities in their hotels by analyzing the peripheral blood circulation of guests.

JAL has changed boarding orders and usage of the boarding bridges for wide-body aircraft of domestic flights to enable passengers to board more smoothly, based on the results from a joint research with Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Japan National Tourism Organization JNTO) has decided to host ‘Adventure Week’ in Tohoku area in the autumn of 2025 in partnership with Adventure Travel Trade Association(ATTA).

Travel Bureau Foundation (JTBF) organized ‘Tourism Resources Seminar’ particularly focusing on accommodation tax to give hints to local tourism organizations, introducing the accommodation tax with the fixed rate of 2% in Kuchan, Hokkaido as a case study.

Hotel Management International (HMI) and IHG Hotels & Resorts has reached a strategic partnership agreement, on which Three ‘Crown Palais’ hotels in Koichi City, Chiryu City and Hamamatsu City will be renovated and rebranded to ‘ANA Crowne Plaza Hotel.’

Japan Tourism Agency has requested a budget of 62.8 billion yen in total for FY2025, budgeting accommodation business revitalization and building of build a new duty-free shop model in local areas as new projects.

HIS, a Japan’s leading travel firm, and Atami City, a popular onsen destination, signed an agreement on inbound travel promotion. The first effort is that HIS Taiwan will send its local staff to Atami.

Nissan Motor, Nippon Travel Agency (NTA), as founders, and other 12 Japanese companies launched ‘Green Journey Promotion Board.' The first ‘Green Journey’ tours are organized in Aso City, Kumamoto Prefecture and Shima City, Mie Prefecture.

Sales of 43 major travel companies in June 2024 were up 2.7% year on year to 291.7 billion JPY, but the monthly result was down 26.6% compared to the same month of 2019. Sales in overseas travel were still down 37.3% compared to June 2019.