TokyoTomo Travel Guide

Liaison conference of tourism associations’ chairmen, composed of 18 tourism-related organizations, drew up a joint proposal on policy-making for Tourism Nation and submitted it on December 15 to Kiyomi Tsujimoto, Vice Minister, and Yuji Fujimoto, Parliamentary Secretary, both at Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT). The proposal deals with pressing issues in achieving the objectives outlined in the Tourism Nation Promotion Basic Plan. It recounts a number of tasks to tackle to reach the goals, for instance, facilitation in the process of passport acquisition for achieving the objective of 20 million overseas travelers.

The proposal claims that, in the passport application, there should be more service counters nationwide to process the application at such locations as post offices, or that travel agencies should be enabled to handle the application on behalf of travelers. It must be studied, the paper recommends, that application by mail or online becomes acceptable, and passport acquisition fee is reduced. Moreover, the paper advises promotion of overseas educational trips and beef-up of Japan-based airlines’ competitiveness. With regard to vitalization of charter flight operation from regional airports, it recommends to entrust C.I.Q. operation at those airports to local governments or private sectors.

In the proposal for achieving the goal of 20 million foreign visitors, the paper points out the necessity of renewing the catch line and logo. Citing the examples of the United Kingdom’s “Visit Britain,” Korea’s “Korea Sparkling,” and Thailand’s “Amazing Thailand,” it advises to use simple and familiar English words. It also insists that some manual should be made available for local governments and tourist facilities to develop their websites in foreign languages.

Source: Travel Vision

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