Digital

Boon Sian Chai, Managing Director and Vice President International Markets at Trip.com, talked about the present and the future of Trip.com, including the outbound travel market from China to Japan.

The number of cross-border mobile payment ‘Alipay+’ member stores in Japan has exceeded 2 million. Payment amount with the affiliated e-wallets and bank app increased by 200%.

Toyo Metro and Linktivity, a BtoB e-ticket platform, formed a capital and business alliance with a plan to develop ‘Tokyo City Pass (provisional name),’ which is packaged with tourist attraction tickets and subway tickets.

Ikyu, a Japanese OTA for high-end accommodation, opened an overseas hotel booking platform in tie-ups with Expedia Rapid API.

Ibaraki Prefecture and Hong Kong-based experience booking platform Klook signed MOU to work together for inbound travel promotions.

Airbnb Japan forms the Home-Sharing Loan framework with financial service provider Oriental Corporation (Orico) and unused house distribution platform ‘Akatsuki Navi.’

Uber Japan partners with Kaga City, Ishikawa Prefecture, for a ride-sharing service by a local government. 14 local residents who have passed training courses by Daiichi Koutsu Sangyo initially started the service as drivers.

‘JTB BÓKUN,’ an activity booking management system,’ has completed API integration with ‘byFood.com' for inbound travelers to Japan, enabling food tour providers on byFood.com to make their operations more effective.

Airport Limousine has started selling e-tickets on about 400 foreign-based OTAs trough API connections with sales channels on e-ticket booking platform Linktivity.

NAVITIME Japan has launched linkage of ‘Japan Travel NAVITIME,’ a navigation app for inbound travelers, with Uber taxi app. A taxi can be dispatched without re-inputting riding location and a destination.

No.1 Japanese Net Promoter Score (NPS) OTA is ikyu.com, followed by Rakuten Travel and the Expedia. ikyu.com gets high scores in higher products than expected or imagined and high-quality travel.

Peter Kern, Vice Chairman and CEO Expedia Group visited Japan, celebrating the18th anniversary of staring its service in Japan. Expedia is developing a new campaign exclusively for Japan, renaming its global branding message ‘Made to Travel’ to ‘Itsumo no Soto.'

‘FUN! JAPAN,' a community website for Asian travelers to Japan, launched a new SNS, which is a service for community members to enjoy conversations with simultaneous translation.

Uber Japan will support Kaga City in Ishikawa Prefecture for a ride-share service by general drivers with its app. The Japanese government will deregulate the ride-share rules for general drivers in this spring.

Airbnb has begun offering its listed homes in Ishikawa Prefecture to victims of the Noto Peninsula earthquake as secondary shelters through non-profit organization Airbnb.org.

ANA has started selling international flight tickets on trip.com through Travelfusion, a NDC aggregator, allowing a user to change a flight, repay and purchase optional services in addition to booking and ticketing on trip.com.

TradFit, a Japanese AI speaker provider for accommodation, launched a new service to recommend a right hotel in a destination based on data acquired from a user’s smartphone.

Timee, a spare-time job matching platform, revealed that the number of spare-time job offerings by hotels increased by about 4.2 times in December 2023 compared to a year ago. it resulted from serious labor shortage in the hospitality industry in Japan.

JTB Tourism Research & Consulting reported the survey results about usage of smartphone and travel spending in Japan. SNS is widely used not only for consumption-related information but also for news or current affairs.

ANA has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Trip.com Group to increase travelers from China to Japan, opening a flagship shop and deliver LIVE commerce on Trip.com website and app.