Travel Sectors

Kyoto City and DMO KYOTO opened a portal site ‘LINK! LINK! LINK!’ for Kyoto citizen as one of the efforts to increase public sympathy for tourism.

J.D. Power Japan announced the results of the hotel satisfaction survey 2024, and top 0f ‘upper up-scale' category is The Okura (top in F&B, room, price, facility and check-in/out), followed by Westin and Sheraton.

Okinawa-based ‘Nature Travel Japan’ was launched as a new destination management company (DMC). Under a brand name of ‘Japan Adventure Travel,’ five local DMCs partner to create adventure travel tours across Japan for inbound travelers.

Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) has created new ‘Travel Etiquette’ and ‘Tourism Pictogram’ to raise awareness of tourist etiquette and recommended behavior.

JTB has forecasted that the number of Japanese travelers during this coming New Year holidays (December 23 2024 to January 3 2025) are expected to increase by 2% year on year to 28.5 million in total.

Yamanashi Prefecture announced that it has given up a Light Rail Transit system for ‘Mt.Fuji Railway Plan’ and instead will introduce rubber tire transportation system without rails as ‘Fuji Tram (preliminary name).’

HIS overseas travel bookings during the New Year’s holiday period (December 27 2024 to January 5 2025) were up 25.3% year on year. The most-booked destination was Seoul, followed by Taipei, Honolulu, Bangkok and Singapore.

JTB and Singapore Airlines started working together for new price-seeking tours using the airline’s NDC channel. The first collaboration tours for Singapore have been sold since November 18.

The first ‘Tourism Resilience Summit’ in APAC was held in Sendai City, joined by nine countries and seven international organizations, and adopted ‘Sendai Statement' on November 11 2024 to prevent and minimize crises and disasters caused by natural hazards.

Mitsui Fudosan and Mitsui Fudosan Resort Management will open its highest luxury brand ‘HOTEL THE MITSUI HAKONE’ in Hakone in 2026, located in Fuji Hakone Izu National Park.

Travel Voice interviewed Kotaro Nagasaki, Yamanashi Governor, to let him talk about the prefecture’s tourism visions and tourism policies including the Mt.Fuji climbing rule. Governor Nagasaki said, "Make Mt.Fuji a world-standard tourism destination.”

Riyadh Air, established by a government-affiliated fund, plan to begin its services in the summer 2025. The startup airline is regarded as one of the Saudi Arabia’s tourism strategies.

JAL and Hoshino Resorts launched a joint campaign to introduce 'a little-known but good destinations’ in Japan on each of the owned media and offer dynamic package tours.

Sales of 43 major travel companies in August 2024 were up 1.8% year on year to 323.4 billion JPY, but was still down 32.5% compared to the same month of 2019. Sales and customers of package tours continued reducing a lot.

Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) has begun digital promotions for ‘EXPO + Tourism, encouraging JNTO website visitors to visit the ‘EXPO + Tourism’ tour booking website, and delivering NFTs featuring nature, foods or cultures in 10 regions.

Japan Tourism Agency of Japan will host ‘Tourism Resilience Summit’ in Sendai from November 9 to 11 2024 to share knowledge about strategies or plans of tourism resilience through symposiums and panel discussions.

Hoshino Resorts announced that the Japanese hotel chain will open Japanese-style ‘onsen ryokan’ in Sharon Spring, New York in 2028 as the first onsen ryokan, targeting wealthy travelers in North America.

Vision, a Wi-Fi router rental company of Japan, launched a travel brand ‘Japan Destinations’ as a destination management company (DMC) to provide seamless arrangement of hotel, activity, transportation and tour guide.

Cruise Planet, a Japan’s cruise travel OTA, launched a BtoB booking system ‘NAVIS’ for travel agents, which enables travel agents to grasp cabin availability at a glance and book available cabins immediately.

Nippon Travel Agency (NTA) and Innovative Space Carrier (ISC) signed a business partnership agreement for ‘space travel business for everyone,' expecting to commercialize the business in 2030s.