Travel Sectors

HIS continued posting worse financial results for Q1 of FY2021 (November 1 2020 to January 31 2021), posting net loss of 8 billion JPY, and announced to give up shifting to a holding company system in November 2021 originally to survive the current challenging situation.

Governors of 32 prefectures, two-third of all 47 prefectures, jointly requested gradual restart of ‘Go To Travel' in low-infection prefectures first and extension of the term beyond originally the end of June this year to boost local economy.

HIS's offering online tours have collected 50,000 or more participants in total since the product was launched in April 2020 to anchor people’s mind to restart overseas travels in the future.

ANA will begin demonstration tests for IATA Travel Pass, a digital health passport app developed by IATA, on the selected international flights. IATA Travel Pass project is currently joined by 13 airlines in the world.

JAL will sell ‘New Travel Style’ to send travelers to Amami Islands in tie-ups with Kagoshima Prefecture, providing free PCR test before departure and ‘JAL Online Trip’ featuring the Islands.

ANA Holdings had requested a total of 33.7 billion JPY as a subsidy for employment adjustment regarding COVID-19, which were the most amounts among listed companies, followed by Kintetsu Group Holdings with 9.5 billion JPY, Oriental Land (Tokyo Disneyland and Disney Sea) with 7.8 billion JPY, KNT-CT Holdings with 6.8 billion JPY.

Mitsui Fudosan and Mitsui Fudosan Hotel Management will launch a subscription service for three hotel brands in Japan to choose a hotel or a room you like on a monthly basis.

ANA restores domestic flights to 55% of the original plan between March 8 and 31 2021 probably after the state of emergency declaration is lifted on March 7, but only 19% of originally planned international flights by June this year.

JAL will reorganize its business structures into four divisions of Route Marketing, Passengers Sales and Marketing, Customer Experience and Mileage and Lifestyle Business divisions to promote digital transformation and to build a sustainable growth base for post-COVID-19.

JTB will reduce its capital from 2.3 billion JPY currently to 100 million JPY as of March 31 2021, downsizing to a small to mid-sized business on the corporate tax system to pay corporate tax at lower rate.

HOSHINOYA Taketomi Island in Okinawa stops serving a bottled water in a room for an environmental reason, desalinating seawater for self-sufficiency of drinking water.

Sales of domestic travel of 47 major travel companies in Japan were down by 38% to 128.1 billion JPY, worsening from a 25.8% reduction in November 2020, due to tentative suspension of Go To Travel’ nationwide amid a re-increase in COVID-19 cases.

According to Tokyo Shoko Research (TSR), bankruptcies of travel companies in Japan were just two in January 2021, fewer bankruptcies than a year ago for three months in row, probably because of effective financial supports by the government and banks amid the pandemic.

KNT-CT Holdings announced that it had liabilities exceeding it’s assets by 3.5 billion JPY as of the end of December 2020, sufferring a large scale of cancellations since the the third wave of COVID-19 hit Japan beginning in November.

Carstay, a Japanese start-up offering sharing services of travel trailers, has launched ‘Mobile Office’ project to rent a travel trailer as a remote-working space, expecting to meet new needs amid the pandemic.

JTB is accelerating digital-based human-touch services in Tourism, Area Solution and Business Solution fields, shifting its selling channels from retailers or call centers to smart devices-oriented Online Mergers with Offline amid its digital transformation efforts.

HIS has launched ‘TABIFLEEEEEK,’ a paid membership online community to create new travel services or products with ideas from the travel lover community and to seize demands after the pandemic.

JTB has developed ‘JTB MaaS API Gateway’ as a tourism-oriented MaaS software. The software provides travelers with seamless services from product search, booking and payment to mobility experience through API connection between the gateway and tourism operators’ apps.

JTB is enhancing the tourism platform function through a new partnership with BOUKUN, a TripAdvisor business unit for a management service of local tours or attractions. Also, JTB revealed introduction of ‘OLI’OLI Hawaii app’ for its customers traveling in Hawaii.

ANA Holdings announced the business results for the first none months of FY2020 ended December 31 2020, posting the most net loss ever of 309.5 billion JPY even though the airline benefitted 34 billion JPY from Go To Travel program. Forecast of net loss of 510 billion JPY for the full year is unchanged.