Digital

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.

‘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.'

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.

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.

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.

Airbnb Japan signed a Workcation agreement with Cabinet Office Okinawa General Bureau to create connections between guests and hosts and local communities in Okinawa to increase relationship and co-education travelers.

Baseball stadium ‘Tokyo Dome,' a home of Yomiuri Giants, introduced the Panasonic’s face recognition system for admission and payment on ‘facethru’ platform provided by Tokyo Dome.

Osaka Prefecture and Osaka City has started offering Metaverse ‘Virtual Osaka,' creating ‘New Cities’ virtually redesigned shopping streets and tourist spots in Osaka City, to appeal Osaka toward EXPO 2025 Osaka Kansai.

ANA has just begun receiving required COVID-19 certifications and other documents for its ANA Travel Ready service on 20 flights on 19 routes in total from Tokyo Haneda and Tokyo Narita to the U.S., Europe and China.

Sharing economy market scale of Japan reached record-high 2.4 trillion JPY in 2021 and is expected to exceed 14.3 trillion JPY in 2030 on the best scenario.

Mastercard and Wakayama Prefecture signed a five-years strategic partnership agreement for tourism promotions and DX, such as cashless or contactless payment system, for smaller businesses.

The top internet service was Yahoo! Japan with the reach rate of 68.9% a month, followed by Goggle with 65.1%, according to Nielsen Digital’s ‘Tops of 2021: Digital in Japan’ ranking.

WiT Japan & North Asia will be organized on January 14 and 15 2022 for the first time in the past two years. Kei Shibata and Aya Aso, WiT organizers, talked about highlight sessions they are interested in.