News

JTB has forecasted 24.7 million travelers in total during this year’s Golden Week holiday period from April 25 to May 5, 24.5 million domestic travelers (2% more than 2019) and 200,000 outbound travelers from Japan (78.5% fewer than 2019).

With a three-jabs vaccination certificate, Chinese travelers entering Japan are no longer required PCR-negative certificate 72 hours before departure, and it will be lifted completely when the legal infection status of COVID-19 is lowered to Level 5 in May.

Iriomote Island in Okinawa Prefecture, a remote island registered as UNESCO World Heritage, drew up a new tourism management plan to restrict visitors up to 1,200 a day or up to 330,000 a year.

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.

Japan Association of Travel Agents (JATA) launched a year-round promotion project to boost outbound travel demand, including social media posting campaigns and also a financial support for acquisition of new passports.

Expedia's the most-searched destinations by Japanese consumers for this coming Golden Week finds that six overseas destinations, such as Taipei, Bangkok or Seoul, are ranked among top 10.

The Japanese government approved a new three-years basic tourism promotion plan to seek quality of travelers rather than the numerical goal, promoting 'Sustainable tourism,’ ‘Expansion of local spending’ and ‘Encouragement to send inbound travelers to local regions.’

ANA will restart Haneda-Beijing services with five flights a week on April 1 2023 and two flights a day between Haneda and Shanghai(Pudong and Hongqiao).

Dai-ichi Life Research Institute analyzed that economic impacts by IR including casinos will be more than the EXPO, calculating economic ripple effect of about 1.14 trillion JPY a year to Kansai area.

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.

ANA will begin offering pre-ordered ‘Quick & Light Meal’ and ‘No Thank you Option’ on its international flights to reduce food losses.

According to Rakuten Travel survey, the most answers of paying attention to sustainability in traveling is found in 20s, while the least answers in 40s.The most motivated reason for changing awareness is ‘food loss or food crisis’ (45.6%).

Ethan Lin, Hong Kong-based local experience booking platform ‘Klook’ CEO and Co-founder, recently visited Japan to talk about the current market trend of inbound travel to Japan.

JTB signed a contract with Smart Health Net to develop medical tourism for luxury inbound travelers to provide high-grade comprehensive medical services for inbound travelers.

The number of Japanese overseas travelers were 537,700 in February 2023, approximately 100,000 more travelers than the previous month.

The number of international visitors in Japan in February 2023 was 1,475,300. Visitors from some source markets, such as Singapore or Middle East, were more than 2019.

Japan Tourism Agency drew up a policy package to recover the outbound travel market, expecting to achieve 20 million travelers, the 2019 level, as soon as possible.

TrustYou revealed that Booking.com collected the most word-of-mouth postings with a share of 34% in Japan, followed by Google with 21%.

Cunard will resume Japan-based cruises of Queen Elizabeth in April 2023, stopping by Ishigaki, Hakata, Miyako, Aburatsu and Otaru for the first time.

JAL will largely resume flights for China in this coming summer schedule beginning on March 26 2023, including new daily flights (JL89/JL80) on the Haneda-Shanghai (Pudong).