Japan Tourism Agency announced that sales of 43 major travel companies in March 2024 were down 6.1% to 421.2 billion JPY compared to the same month of 2019, improving from a 21.9% decrease in February 2024.
Sales in domestic travel were down 36.1% year on year to 281 billion JPY, which were up 11.8% compared to March 2019.
Sales in overseas travel were up 65.6% year on year to 116.7 billion JPY, but the result was still down 33.1% compared to March 2019.
Sales in inbound travel were up 23.4% year on year to 23.8 billion JPY.
In comparison with March 2023, sales in domestic package tours reduced by 12.9% to 79.6 billion JPY with 1,978,311 customers (down 22.3%). Sales in overseas package tours were up 185.1% year on year to 12.8 billion JPY with 44,766 customers (up 211.5%), but compared to March 2019, sales and customers were largely down 66.1% and 77.2% respectively. After the pandemic, a trend to shift from group travel to FIT seemed to be strong.
The top was JTB Group with sales of 191.3 billion JPY (up 24.1%over 2019), followed by KNT-CT Holdings with 45.1 billion JPY (up 5.1%), HIS with 34.4 billion JPY (down 27.2%), NTA with 31.8 billion JPY (down 22.5%),, and Hankyu with 24.7 billion JPY (down 23.1%).