News

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,’

Telecom Square began offering ‘WiFiBox,’ a an automatic and contactless Wi-Fi router rental service in major airports, such as Narita and Haneda, and The rental price is very competitive at 300 JPY a day or more.

According to a survey by Jalan Research Center of Recruit, 24.4% of all respondents performed day trips in the past year from September 2020 to August 2021. The ratio of 20s males particularly was as high as 41%.

‘Regya Pass! (Leisure Pass in English),’ a subscription service for leisure facilities, will be available for amusement parks, theme-parks, aquariums, zoos, museums, onsen or even camping.

ANA NEO, a virtual travel platform development company of ANA Group, has raised 4.5 billion JPY in total to develop a Metaverse travel ‘SKY WHALE.'

JTB has forecasted that the number of domestic travelers in Japan will increase by 97% year on year to 260 million in 2022, but recent rise in prices may discourage people to travel.

JAL flight subscription service ‘A New Style of Travel' with accommodation subscription service ‘HafH' was used by 37 years old on average, and the majority was office worker with a share of 68%. 75% traveled to unexpected destinations.

JAL will raise domestic flight airfares by 3% to 8% and also upgrade fares on a flight day for a year from April 15 2022 due to rise in fuel cost mainly.

Japan Association of Travel Agents (JATA) will send its first delegation to Hawaii on April 3 2022 to restart overseas tours and develop the national momentum toward overseas travel.

Fair Trade Commission of Japan accepted an improvement plan, which is a corporate plan to exclude suspicious violation of Anti-Monopoly Act, from Booking.com B.V. on March 16.

Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) opened Metaverse space ‘Kyoto PlLUS X’ in virtual space ‘Shibuya Miyashita Park Powered by PARALLEL SITE’ to deliver and experience tradition and tourism attractions virtually.

ANA Trading has established a network of digital signage advertisement or digital out of home (DOOH) in six domestic airports to operate ‘TRAVEL MEDIA Airport Dynamic Ad Vision,’ the next generation advertising service.

OYO Japan will change its corporate and brand names to ‘Tabist,’ including ‘OYO Ryokan,’ on April 1 2022. Ryota Tanozaki, OYO Japan President, explained the reasons and its new strategy for Japan market.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced at a news conference on March 16 that the government will expand subsidies for domestic travel from within prefecture to a regional block on April 1 before nationwide ‘Go To Travel’ campaign is restarted.

Oricon, an entertainment data provider in Japan, enters a vacation rental market by signing a capital tie-up agreement with ‘StayList,’ a vacation rental meta-search, especially focusing on Asia.

Nippon Travel Agency (NTA) will hold SDGs-themed metaverse event ‘GO!SDGs’ on March 25 2022 in cooperation with GAIA LINK. Applicants can freely move as avatars in the virtual space.

The survey results show a decrease in Generation Z who has good chances to buy their preferable merchandise in physical shops, as the ratio drops from 37.1% in 2019 to 18% in 2021, but the top place to purchase is still physical shops with the ratio of 53%.

‘Travelco’ is selected as the most-satisfied meta-search for both air ticket and hotel in Japan, followed by ‘Google Travel,' which is firstly among top five meta-searches.

ANA Holdings unveiled its new middle-range international airline ‘Air Japan’ as a hybrid airline between full service carrier and low cost carrier, aiming to begin its Narita-based services on the Asia and Oceania network in the latter half o FY2023.

Hermione Joye, Sector Lead, APAC Travel, Google, talked about search-based travel trends in 2022 in APAC. In Japan, search interests in 'sustainability' is skyrocketing. She also said that travel brands should take advantage of first party data.