Digital

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.

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism has launched the ‘Pokémon GO’ program in Odawara City to help visitors discover local history by virtually placing poke stops on the game.

JAL has started accepting vaccination record registration in addition to PCR test result on digital health certificate app ‘VeriFly’ for its flights from Japan to U.S.

Tokyo Metro and Bureau of Transportation Tokyo Metropolitan Government started selling all-you-can-ride ‘Tokyo Subway Ticket’ and a package with Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Sky Tree admissions even for residents in the Tokyo Metropolitan area.

Mt.Fuji Area Tourism DX Innovation Consortium including Panasonic begins demonstration tests for ‘free-hand tourism’ in the area by using face recognition digital pass for payments and entries in Fuji Kyuko railway and tourism facilities.

The most used information-gathering tool by Japanese GenZ was SNS (69.8%) in 2021, replacing TV (40.8%) in 2014, and users of mail apps reduced from 64.7% to 42.6%, while users of music and video apps remarkably increased from 39.8% to 70.6%.

one of major travel agencies in Japan, Developing its original vaccination passport ‘Smart Corona Pass,’ working on LINE, Tobu Top Tours will use it for the government-led vaccination package demonstration program.

Shizuoka Prefecture and NEC will test the face recognition system for about 100 participants in trekking tours to Mt. Fuji to check their registered vaccination or negative certificates on the app.

Rakuten, one of largest OTAs in Japan, and Marriott International signed a strategic partnership to enhance collaboration between Marriott Bonvoy and Rakuten membership program.

Okinawa Convention &Visitors Bureau (OCVB) and other organizations will build a tourism data platform to visualize data on tourist needs, movements and consumption for effective delivery of tourism information and expansion of tourist spending.

Airbnb Japan signed a partnership agreement with Tatsuno Town in Nagano Prefecture, in which Airbnb gives financial supports for renovation of old folk houses and trial Workcation.

Rakuten Travel opened a special page featuring more than 1,000 lodgings with specific benefits for vaccinated travelers on its booking site.

HIS International Tours, a local firm of HIS in America, has launched ‘Copolo,’ an online booking site exclusively for sustainable travel, in collaboration with CHOOOSE, a startup of Norway.

Klook, a Hong Kong-based activity booking platform, has started offering a Google Things to do service for Klook partner activity or attraction operators.

Shizuoka Prefecture will organize a virtual event ‘Mt. Fuji Drone Challenge in Asagiri’ for Singaporean to control a drone remotely to experience tourism attractions virtually.

JR East, a railway company, will serve ‘Suica Smart Lock,' which allows you to use Suica, JE East IC card for payment, as an entrance key for a hotel or an office.

Nihon Unisys travel product distribution platform ‘Offer Links’ and ‘asoview! Agent’ platform for travel agents are linked to deal with Asoview! contents not only as affiliate-typed products but also as their original products.

Meta Tourism, a new tourism concept that oversees a variety of content layers for a particular place or a particular phenomenon, has started its activities in earnest, when it held a kick-off event for Sumida Meta Tourism Festival on August 24 2021.