TokyoTomo Travel Guide

Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) announced on June 20 that all international passengers need to have their passport inspected at the boarding gates on and after July 1.

The reason for the decision is that since automatic check-in machines have come into wide use, passport control at the airline’s check-in counter has become impractical. Besides, MLIT points out that since International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) advises every nation to tighten passport control at the boarding gates for international flights as a measure against terrorism, the practice is becoming universal.

Currently, U.S.-based airlines and the other airlines that operate U.S.-bound flights already conduct the inspection at the gates in compliance with the request from the U.S. government.

Source: Travel Vision

Travel Vision Inc. provides information on the travel industry in Japan via "Daily Travel Vision", a Japanese-language e-mail newsletter, and the "Travel Vision" website. There are nearly 110,000 people working in the Japanese travel industry, and Travel Vision is proud to be bringing travel news to more than 30,000 people through Daily Travel Vision.

Garuda Indonesia (GA) resumed its Nagoya/ Denpasar service on June 2. The route continues to show a vibrant growth, according to Sales Manager of its Nagoya office, with an average seat load factor of 86.9% as of June 19, which exceeds a minimum target of approximately 70% set by Garuda Japan. The main traffic segment is leisure travelers, 94% of whom are traveling on package tours.

While GA Nagoya Office appreciates the fact that “the local market has long awaited the airline to come back,” he says he believes the excellent restart is attributed to two reasons.

Firstly, the airline has informed the travel market of a resumption of the flight at an early stage and secondly the country enjoys its high popularity among other competitive beach resorts. Already last December, Garuda announced that it was going to resume its Nagoya/ Denpasar service, thereby several travel agents including JTB and H.I.S. started to produce package tours to Indonesia. The airline also launched a discount for advance bookings, namely, a discount of 10,000 yen per passenger if a name is given 60 days prior to a departure date.

As a result, “Various customers from young people to seniors are joining the package tours. At the product planning stage, we have encouraged our travel agents to plan a 6-day long package tour, departing on Saturday, enabling them to come up with various tours featuring not only resort areas, but also visits onto Jogjakarta to see the World Heritage sites such as Borobudur,” he explained, largely thanks to ample time the airline had to prepare to resume the Nagoya flight.

Usually, the month of June sees less group traffic including incentive tours, but June this year has produced 20 groups of 20 to 80 passengers. Some flights are even fully booked already 3 months prior to a departure. GA Nagoya Office assumed, “Although our Indonesian beach resort destinations from Nagoya compete with Cairns in Australia and Hawaii, our lower land costs and a large capacity offer, including other airlines, have seemingly helped our travel agents to plan their package tours without any anxiety.”

The outbound travel this summer, as a whole, continues to be sluggish, but GA Nagoya Office said he is convinced that “Garuda’s Nagoya route will not see a downturn. We shall continue our daily efforts to build up our business from Nagoya.”

In the future, Garuda Indonesia intends to launch customer-oriented advertising to enhance a market presence of its Nagoya/ Bali route and at the same time to encourage the travel industry in Nagoya to develop new products featuring, for example, “Healing” in a mountainous area like Ubud, which have been sold in parts of the Tokyo and Osaka markets, thus the airline is determined to further expand its sales promotion well in advance.

Source: Travel Vision

Travel Vision Inc. provides information on the travel industry in Japan via "Daily Travel Vision", a Japanese-language e-mail newsletter, and the "Travel Vision" website. There are nearly 110,000 people working in the Japanese travel industry, and Travel Vision is proud to be bringing travel news to more than 30,000 people through Daily Travel Vision.

The agreement came after the aviation officials of Japan and India met in Tokyo on June 17 and 18. Both countries agreed to double both the number of weekly passenger services and destinations. The frequency increase will, however, become effective only after the summer schedule 2010 subject to departure/ arrival slots available for international flights at Tokyo Narita.

Japan initially proposed deregulations based on the “Asia Gateway Initiative”, but India insisted that it would not be agreeable as long as Japan’s metropolitan airports restrict aircraft movements. Consequently, both parties failed to reach an agreement to that effect.

The new bilateral agreement allows both Japan and India to increase the current 21 weekly flights up to 42. The number of destinations will also be doubled with Japan increasing to 6 destinations from 3 including presently served Delhi and Mumbai and with India increasing to 8 destinations from 4 that include Tokyo Narita, Osaka Kansai and Okinawa Naha.

Both parties can increase destinations with immediate effect. Code-sharing with the third country will be liberalized, reflecting Japan’s request. India will increase weekly operations to Narita from 4 to 14 after the summer schedule 2010.

Presently, Air India is the only Indian carrier serving Japan During the air talks, however, one of the topics was that an Indian airline actually showed an interest to inaugurate its service o Japan, once aircraft departure/ arrival slots become available at Narita Airport.

Source: Travel Vision

Travel Vision Inc. provides information on the travel industry in Japan via "Daily Travel Vision", a Japanese-language e-mail newsletter, and the "Travel Vision" website. There are nearly 110,000 people working in the Japanese travel industry, and Travel Vision is proud to be bringing travel news to more than 30,000 people through Daily Travel Vision.