Tag: "digital"

ANA will begin serving complimentary in-flight internet access even to Business Class passengers on its international flights in this coming summer.

Boon Sian Chai, Managing Director and Vice President International Markets at Trip.com, talked about the present and the future of Trip.com, including the outbound travel market from China to Japan.

The number of cross-border mobile payment ‘Alipay+’ member stores in Japan has exceeded 2 million. Payment amount with the affiliated e-wallets and bank app increased by 200%.

Toyo Metro and Linktivity, a BtoB e-ticket platform, formed a capital and business alliance with a plan to develop ‘Tokyo City Pass (provisional name),’ which is packaged with tourist attraction tickets and subway tickets.

Ibaraki Prefecture and Hong Kong-based experience booking platform Klook signed MOU to work together for inbound travel promotions.

Uber Japan partners with Kaga City, Ishikawa Prefecture, for a ride-sharing service by a local government. 14 local residents who have passed training courses by Daiichi Koutsu Sangyo initially started the service as drivers.

‘JTB BÓKUN,’ an activity booking management system,’ has completed API integration with ‘byFood.com' for inbound travelers to Japan, enabling food tour providers on byFood.com to make their operations more effective.

Airport Limousine has started selling e-tickets on about 400 foreign-based OTAs trough API connections with sales channels on e-ticket booking platform Linktivity.

NAVITIME Japan has launched linkage of ‘Japan Travel NAVITIME,’ a navigation app for inbound travelers, with Uber taxi app. A taxi can be dispatched without re-inputting riding location and a destination.

‘FUN! JAPAN,' a community website for Asian travelers to Japan, launched a new SNS, which is a service for community members to enjoy conversations with simultaneous translation.

ANA has started selling international flight tickets on trip.com through Travelfusion, a NDC aggregator, allowing a user to change a flight, repay and purchase optional services in addition to booking and ticketing on trip.com.

TradFit, a Japanese AI speaker provider for accommodation, launched a new service to recommend a right hotel in a destination based on data acquired from a user’s smartphone.

Timee, a spare-time job matching platform, revealed that the number of spare-time job offerings by hotels increased by about 4.2 times in December 2023 compared to a year ago. it resulted from serious labor shortage in the hospitality industry in Japan.

JTB Tourism Research & Consulting reported the survey results about usage of smartphone and travel spending in Japan. SNS is widely used not only for consumption-related information but also for news or current affairs.

Tokyo Metro and YAMAHA will begin testing a new multi-language service ‘Visualized Announcement’ transcribing voice announcements in a station on a smartphone.

ANA NEO, an ANA Group company for digital solution, has launched a virtual trip platform app ‘ANA GranWhale,’ where a user as an avatar can enjoy virtual travel space ‘V-TRIP’ and a virtual shopping space ‘Sky Mall.’

NTT Data, a major Japanese data company, will open a capsule hotel specializing in sleep analysis, acquiring, accumulating and analyzing sleep data using infrared cameras, sound-collecting microphones, and body movement sensors.

Amazon Japan (Amazon) has begun offering ‘Alexa Smart Properties (ASP)’ as a service for businesses using the personal AI assistant Alexa. Tokyu Hotels & Resorts will introduce Echo Show 8 to 56 premium class rooms at the lifestyle hotel "SAPPORO STREAM HOTEL" that will open in Sapporo on January 16 2024.

Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) launched a special website for the Osaka Kansai Expo, expecting the Expo is an opportunity to encourage inbound tourists to visit regional areas.

Airbnb Japan has introduced new specific functions for Japan in line with the recent trends in the Japanese market, saying that guests choose locations other than famous tourist spots and prefer to group travel.