Tag: "digital"

Universal Studios Japan (USJ) and Ant Group signed a corporate marketing partnership contract to introduce Alipay+ payment service in the park, expecting that the partnership will raise payment conveniences for visitors to Japan from Asia.

Online shopping spending a Japanese household in July 2022 was up 20.4% year on year to 21,940 JPY a month, and travel-related spending was up 2.4 times to 3,595 JYP a household.

Payn, a Japanese startup, has released bata ‘Payn’ to automatize a billing service for hotels or restaurants which have troubles with recouping cancellation fees, financing 90 million JPY from two investors.

Passport renewal in Japan will be made possible online on March 27 2023. A Japanese passport holder will no longer visit an application window for passport renewal procedure.

Sumitomo Mitsui Card, a leading credit card of Japan, will begin providing its cashless payment data to Tourism Forecast Platform, enabling users to analyze consumption behaviors of domestic and foreign travelers.

HIS has acquired shares of Rural, a startup to provide tourism-oriented digital currency ‘Rural Coin’ and ‘Rural NFT' to accelerate its new business in a Web 3.0 space.

Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) has launched a digital promotion using the AR technology in Singapore, in which a user can enjoy virtual experience of the famous summer festival ‘Nebuta’ in Aomori Prefecture on a smartphone.

HIS, a Japanese leading travel firm, welcomed 1.3 million or more visitors in its virtual shop ‘HIS Travel World,’ which was launched in a smartphone metaverse space ‘REALITY World.'

The most popular travel-related website as of June 2022 was jalan.net, followed by Rakuten Travel and JAL. All of the top 10 sites increased unique users compared to a year ago,.Users of video sharing sites and SNS as travel information sources increased even compared to 2019.

Rakuten survey finds that the most-preferred accommodation cost is ‘8,000 to 10,000 JPY’ a night with the ratio of 23% this summer among Japanese young generation. The most-selected information source is ‘Instagram’ with the ratio of 62.8%,

JTB has launched a social gift service ‘JTB Koto Collection,’ on which a user give travel and local experience plans as gifts on SNS or e-mail.

All of top 5 Japanese OTAs increased by 1.5 times or more in the first quarter of FY2022 (April to June) compared to a year ago. Top OTA was jalan.net with 13.7 million users increasing by 71%.

HIS, one of the biggest travel companies in Japan, will launch ‘Web 3.0 Virtual Project’ to offer NFT and metaverse services in a travel space and produce its original virtual liver of 2D or 3D avatars as a new advertising characters.

AI-based Japanese OTA ‘atta’ released an automatic booking change function, which changes a booked hotel package to cheaper one if the price is cut after completion of the initial booking.

Japanese SNS users are expected to reach 82.7 million by the end of 2022, which account for 82% of the whole population. The most-answered reason for using SNS was to gather information on hobbies or jobs with the ratio of 44%.

Nippon Travel Agency or NTA signed a comprehensive partnership agreement with Gaia Link to use ‘Virbela’ metaverse platform for local communities, corporate customers and eduction providers.

Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting survey finds the market scale of online tours in Japan was estimated at 9.56 billion JPY in 2020, growing by 30% a year, and the average payment to a paid online tour was 7,918 JPY a person.

ANA announced ‘ANA Smart Travel,’ an app-based new service to provide an individual passenger with personalized information and services, trying to increase online check-in passengers.

Chineses viewers of the virtual tours connected to cross-border e-commerce on the Alibaba platform, which were broadcasted by Japan National Tourism Organization reached 1.35 million in total.

Kouraku Japan, a marketing company for Chinese high-end consumers, broadcasted a virtual tourism tour combined with live e-commerce for Kagoshima Prefecture on Alibaba Group’s ‘Fliggy,’