News

Shimanami Japan, a local DMO, has started tourism DX demonstration on its app for rent-a-bicycle users in Shimanami area in order to increase local spending by them.

Princess Cruises has started selling Yokohama-based cruises in 2025, serving 17 cruises visiting 34 cities in South Korea and Taiwan as well as in Japan.

Air Aisa X will restart serving four flights a week on the Kuala Lumpur- Sapporo route on December 3 2023.Hokkaido is a popular destination for Malaysians.

MOL Cruises announced that the Japanese cruise operator will begin operating a new cruise ship ‘MITSUI OCEAN FUJI’ in December 2024, expecting to attract senior working people or couples in Japan and even inbound travelers as new customers.

Booking.com released a apology letter to partners regarding delay of payment to partners and explained that it happened in the process of shifting to a new payment system to secure higher security.

Celebrity Cruises will serve four Japan-based cruises in 2023 and expand to 18 cruises in total through 2024, expecting to welcome more than 30,000 passengers on board.

Osaka Convention & Tourism Bureau will install multi-language generative AI ‘Kotozna laMondoI’ with a capability of more than 20 different languages on its official website.

NAVITIME Japan, a navigation app provider of Japan, revealed which cities in Japan is getting popular among tourists from U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Spain and Italy, based on the search results on ‘Japan Travel by NAVITIME’ app.

Okinawa Convention & Visitors Bureau (OCVB) has forecasted that the number of tourists to Okinawa will increase by 44.3% year on year to 8.22 million in 2023. International arrivals in Okinawa are expected to reduce 65.5% to 1.02 million compared to 2019.

JTB published ‘JTB Outbound Travel Report 2023,' saying the outbound travel market of Japan was far from full-scale recovery because of weaker Yen and rise in prices in destinations.

Japan is selected as top 3 ‘next destination’ in all of the 12 targeted APAC markets except India, according to Klook, an experience booking platform. In contrast, 84% of Japanese respondents select Japan as the next destination.

Passengers using Narita International Airport were up 91% year on year to 3.21 million in August 2023. International flight passengers totaled 2.41 million, 155% more than a year ago or 29% fewer than August in 2019.

JTB has began selling a 9-days New Year cruise tour for Guam and Saipan with MSC Bellissima on the Shopping Channel QVC, a TV shopping program.

Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) Dubai Office Executive Officer, Daisuke Kobayashi, talked how important the Middle East is for Japan to exploit a new luxury travel market. He said, "Middle East is the last blue ocean for Japan."

Japan Tourism Agency classifies countermeasures against over-tourism as three concrete ideas at the second cross-ministries meeting on over-tourism preventions.

Yusen Cruise, a Japanese leading cruise operator, names a new 52,000 tons ship as ‘Asuka III,' which will enter into the service in 2025. Yusen says it will be a moving art museum on the sea.

Local experience booking platform ‘Klook’ has started offering ‘Stay +,’ a package combing accommodation booking with in-destination products such as such as airport railway tickets or theme-park admission tickets.

The number of Japanese overseas travelers were 1,201,200 in August 2023, the first over 1 million a month since the pandemic happened.

The number of international visitors in Japan in August 2023 was 2,156,900, recovering to a 14.4% reduction compared to the same month 2019. China lifted the group travel restriction to Japan on August 10 2023, but the effect was limited in August.

The top-prize winners of ‘The 7th Japan Tourism Award' goes to ‘Hotels on the entire railway line project’ renovating vacant houses to hotel rooms and unmanned stations to hotel receptions along the JR Ome Line.