According to Survey of Travel Market Trends (September 2013, 2nd quarter) conducted by the Japan Association of Travel Agents (JATA), overseas travel DI for July to September 2013 improved by 8 points, to -23, from 3 months ago. Although it fell below -14, the outlook from the previous survey, the survey sets -17 for the outlook for the next 3 months, indicating that overseas travel DI bottomed out and shows recovery trend.
According to destinations, Hawaii turned out to be the only destination with positive growth with +3. 5 destinations including Hawaii showed recovery: Oceania -38 (+7 points), USA/Canada -19 (+4 points) and Asia -19 (+1 point). On the contrary, Northeast Asia, including South Korea -77 (-8 points) and China -83 (-5 points), continued to decline thus making the recovery of the whole market moderate. However, the outlook of survey is that in the next three months, DI is expected to improve or sustain in 6 destinations including Asia -12, Korea -71 and China -81, although Hawaii -2 and USA/Canada -21 are expected to decrease.
According to the customer segments, families increased significantly during the summer with -18 (+18 points). Female office workers -39 (+5 points) and students -48 (+6 points) also went upward while seniors maintained -9. In the next three months, DI is expected to improve greatly in honeymoon -22 (+7 points) and incentive -32 (+6 points), and it is expected to go up in all customer segments excluding families -29 and students -49. Furthermore, customer segments vary according to the destinations, for instance, “China and South Korea are hardly selected as destinations for educational/training tours” and “Business trips to China are hardly affected by political situations.”
The survey was conducted during August 1 to 23, 2013, directed to 605 registered JATA member companies and collected 305 valid replies.
