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JTB President Sasaki Speaks of Three Strategies at Business Forum to
Survive Upcoming Struggle for Existence February 2008
At the annual New Year Business Forum held earlier, Takashi
Sasaki, president of JTB Corp., spoke of three strategies that the
entire group of JTB is going to implement over the next decade. They
are: (1) global operation, (2) promotion of human exchange at home
and abroad, and (3) making resilient corporate structure viable under
any future hardship.
Regarding the global operation, the group no longer confines the
territory of business activities to Japan alone, but expand it to all
the world. In reality, it set up a holding company to supervise the
total operation in China, and acquired a travel company in Europe as
a base for business expansion in the area.
As for the promotion of domestic and international human
exchange, the group considers it should serve the objectives of
increasing foreign visitors to Japan to 10 million, bringing their
consumption to three trillion yen with an average stay of four days
in Japan, and soliciting international conferences 1.5 times more
than now - all in accordance with the government's guideline for
tourism nation.
JTB has split itself up into several companies to address these
objectives vigorously. Some of the spin-offs are more regionalized
than others and are committed to restore vitality to local
communities, by way of turning them into attractive tourist
destinations. Mr. Sasaki says the whole group is making strenuous
efforts to bring these attempts to a success and calls for proposals
of joint projects to let these companies collaborate on.
With reference to making resilient corporate structure, he
envisions an enormous investment in information system over the next
five to ten years to ensure its survival as a travel agency. In the
information society with Internet in wide use, he argues, upgrading
of system architecture is indispensable in order to respond
accurately to the diversified requirements of individuals and, for
this reason, the group will be compelled to make continual investment
for years to come.
Meanwhile, airlines are pulling back from leisure routes more
often than not, which necessitates travel agencies to take risks and
buy up tremendous amount of air seats for their own merchandising.
For that matter, working capital of more than 100 billion yen will be
required for the buying, he estimates, in order to make annual sales
of 300 billion yen in overseas travel business.
Therefore, it becomes critical whether or not a travel agency is
capable to allocate funds for system renewal and purchasing. He
emphasizes the importance of seeking efficiency to secure necessary
funds by streamlining the existing business processes while
broadening the horizons of the group's activities.
Under the circumstances, JTB makes it a point to invest 10
billion yen to get a return of 20 billion yen in consolidated pretax
profit. The company aspires to make the financial ground strong
enough to carry out this policy without running into debt.
The fiscal years 2006 and 2007 are considered as a transitional
period when spinning-off of the subsidiaries took place, so JTB made
an investment of eight billion yen in each of the two years with a
view to post 20 billion yen in pretax profit, which is reportedly
progressing as planned.
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