TokyoTomo Travel Guide

JTB Corp. has taken a step toward realignment of its retail stores across the nation. Its public relation office denied the number to scrap is as many as 200 as was reported by some newspaper, criticizing that it was a mere guess. However, it admitted that scrutiny is going on to reassess store function and network more broadly than usual. It remains to be seen how many stores are going to be closed, when the store network restructuring is completed, or whether the jobs are cut, but the spokesman suggested that the revamp could take place on a large scale. Incidentally, the number of existing stores, including registered offices for corporate sales and merchandizing operation, totals 940.

Store realignment is an agenda taken up in the medium-term business plan having started from fiscal 2009 in a bid to save operating costs. The aggravate revenue of 14 companies in JTB Group for the first half of this fiscal year plunged 17.7 percent to 557 billion yen under the influence of the new influenza. With profit margins ever dwindling, JTB seeks to improve profitability by cutting costs through store realignment and focusing more on online business.

Online sales are estimated to comprise 7 percent of total sales in this fiscal year and are expected to grow to 12 percent in FY2011, and the kinds of travel products salable online are to be increased to 300,000, twice the current number. Hiromi Tagawa, president and CEO, told a Travel Vision reporter last year that the information technology investment should go to contents rather than to equipments and facilities. So far as his policy remains unchanged ever since, he should have it in mind that the company develops merchandise that is unique to JTB like the ones associated with tourism-oriented community exchange. It also expects to have bookings through the third party’s website as well as bookings from its own website and Tornos site started last January.

As far as other major travel agencies are concerned, Kinki Nippon Tourist has closed 27 stores since January 2008 when it established KNT Tourist but opened in the meantime 23 new stores. Nippon Travel Agency has not undergone a major restructuring either but continues to scrap and build stores as usual depending on their performance. These two agencies are equally positive in boosting online sales but appear to have not set out yet to reorganize their store network.

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.

In the current autumn/winter series of package tours, Nippon Travel Agency (NTA) has included a tour that visits Palace Museums in Beijing and Taipei. It is unique in that the tour goes to both China and Taiwan at one time; besides, participants are presented with a DVD that has reproduced the Forbidden City in virtual reality. The tour boasts of “three visits to each Palace Museum” of Beijing, Taipei, and DVD so that the participants get a better grasp of the Palace Museums and enjoy the tour all the more. DVD, which NTA staff hit on the idea of creating for the impact of its visuality, was co-produced by the two Museums and Toppan Printing Co. of Japan, and the work marks the first instance of collaboration of its kind with relation to overseas package tour and the destinations. The agency is planning to hand out the DVD to the participant of not only this particular tour but other tours visiting the Palace Museum in Beijing. It aims to collect 600 participants from Tokyo and Osaka.

Tour planners of NTA expect that the DVD’s visualization makes it possible to convey the images of what people cannot normally allowed to approach or the past grandeur of the Palace, so the DVD will serve to excite the customers’ curiosity before departure and deepen their understanding and satisfaction by visiting the real place. NTA held internally a destination seminar of China and Taiwan for its sales staff on October 22 and made a presentation of the tour. At the seminar, Toshiyuki Arikata, manager for Marketing and Promotion, Overseas Travel Product Department of East Japan, said it is an NTA-like product and he is confident of its success. NTA is eager to promote sales by giving information and knowledge to its sales staff by means of seminar and is further planning to release a portion of the DVD contents at its website to arouse public interest and motivate people to buy the tour.

In the meantime, NTA has produced a DVD of Pompeii, Italy, for customers visiting there on NTA tours. This sales method is likely to be followed by the agency with some other destinations hereafter.

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.

Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) reported the aggregate revenue of leading travel agencies in July fell 18.1 percent to 497.3 billion yen, of which sales of overseas travel was 156.7 billion yen, down 30.0 percent. The agencies that achieved a growth for the month in the sales of overseas travel were only two: Club Tourism with a growth of 8.7 percent (sales: 3.7 billion yen) and Hankyu Travel with 1.5 percent (sales: 19.9 billion yen). All other agencies except these two marked a double-digit negative growth.

Top three agencies in the sales volume of overseas travel were H.I.S. with 20.9 billion yen (growth: -21.9%), Hankyu Travel, and JTB World Vacations with 14.9 billion yen (growth: -29.8%). None of Kinki Nippon Tourist (KNT), Nippon Travel Agency (NTA), and JTB Tokyo Metropolitan, ranking No. 4 to 6 in this order, could achieve 10 billion yen in sales. JTB Group consisting of 14 companies lost 38.6 percent in revenue to 24.8 billion yen.

Customers on overseas package tours registered a nominal growth of 0.1 percent to 346,635, while their sales tumbled 25.2 percent to 50.7 billion yen, sending an average selling price down by about 50,000 yen to 146,271 yen. This goes to signify the current mainstream of travel trend that opts for an inexpensive, nearby destination for a short stay.

Aggregate revenue of domestic travel was 336.8 billion yen, down 10.9 percent, and inbound travel was 3.7 billion yen, down 29.8 percent.

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.