Japanese Travelers

‘Prefecture ranking in tourism attractions,’ revealed as one of the domestic travel survey by Jalan Research Center, that the most-satisfied prefecture in 2023 was Kagoshima, followed by Ehime and Ishikawa.

The number of Japanese outbound travelers was down 38.8% to 930,200 in June 2024 compared to the same month 2019, worse than 34.5% down in May 2024.

Japan Tourism Agency(JTA) has begun bridging between schools or local governments and travel agents for overseas educational trips, expanding the overseas educational trip market.

HIS overseas travel bookings in this summer vacation period was 97.5% of the last year, but just 52.3% of the 2019 level. The most-booked destination was Seoul, followed by Taipei, Honolulu. Bangkok and Singapore.

JTB has forecasted the number of Japanese travelers will decrease by 4.1% year on year to 69.8 million in total. Outbound travelers are expected to increase by 1.2% year on year to 1.75 million, around 65% of the pre-pandemic level.

JR Hotel Group announced that LINE, the biggest communication app in Japan, became an option as ‘JR Hotel Members(JRHM)’ pass.

Hong Kong-based experience booking platform Klook has begun selling ‘Klook eSIM' for 60 countries, which can be activated in its app after purchasing without scanning QR code.

Yamanashi Prefecture and Shizuoka Prefecture, the gateway of Mt.Fuji, will launch management systems to control climbers on July 1 2024, expecting the regulations will be a model case to solve over-tourism.

The number of Japanese outbound travelers was down 34.5% to 941,700 in May 2024 compared to the same month 2019, improving the reduction rate from 46.7% in April 2024.

‘Tourism EXPO Japan 2025’ will be held in Aichi Sky Expo in Aichi Prefecture for the first time, appealing Chubu and Hokuriku areas. Tourism EXPO Japan 2024 will open in Tokyo Big Sight on September 26 2024.

Tokyo Shibuya Ward and Honolulu of Hawaii signed a sister city agreement to work together for sharing knowledge and experiences in tourism, eduction, sports and environment.

The latest Euromonitor International survey finds that online sales of travel-related products in Japan amounted to record-high 4.7 trillion yen, surpassing 4.5 trillion yen in 2019.

Leaders of Japan, China and South Korea agreed to increase exchange of people among the tree nations to 40 million by 2030, designating ‘Culture Exchange Years’ for the next two years.

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. 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.

The total amount of Japanese travel consumption was up 11.8% year on year to 4.6 trillion JPY in the 1st quarter of 2024, 3.8 trillion JPY for overnight trips (up 16.0% over 2019) and 99 million JPY for day trips (up 2.9% over 2019).

The number of Japanese outbound travelers was down 46.7% to 888,800 in April 2024 compared to the same month 2019.

The total number of guest nights in March 2024 (provisionally) was up 8.2% year on year to 54.9 million, which consisted of 42.2 million Japanese guests (up 1.3%) and 12.7 million foreigners' guests (up 33.4%).

The face recognition boarding process ‘Face Express’ on a passenger’s smartphone was tested at Narita Airport, linking the app with ANA and JAL apps.

ANA and JAL have received around 10% more international flight bookings for this coming Golden Week holiday period. ANA's bookings on Honolulu flights increased by 1.5 times to record-high 15,993.

The number of Japanese outbound travelers was down 36.8% to 1,219,800 in March 2024 compared to the same month 2019.