Young Japanese Prefer Games to Travel; youth trends

The “Land of the Rising Sun” is one travel market that many want to tap and cultivate. But it is not an easy one to tap. Some insights into the market and the changing Japanese customers were revealed at the WIT Conference in the session, “My Name is Yuki-san, I Love to Travel”.

The panel was moderated by Aya Aso, CEO & president of Agora Hospitalities, Japan and Yeoh Siew Hoon. The panellists included some of the movers and shakers of the Japanese travel industry:

• Kei Shibata, president & CEO of Venture Republic, Japan

• Yoshinori Nishihara, regional director – sales & accounting management, Pegasus Solutions, Japan

• Sam Ohta, publisher & president, OHTA Publications, Japan

• David Asahara, director, North Asia, Expedia Affiliate Network

Here are the highlights.

Women are travelling
Japanese women are travelling, especially those in their 30s and 40s, and 60s and 70s.The latter group is enthusiastic and aggressive to travel. Where they go depends on how much money they have in their pockets. The women in their 30s and 40s travel by themselves and are active. So focus on women travellers, forget about men.

The young prefer playing in the virtual world to travelling in the real one

Of young Japanese aged between 20 and 30, more than 30% ohave not travelled in the last 12 months. They prefer to play games on their mobiles or computers. They spend a lot of time on video games, preferring the virtual world to the real one.

Mobile, social media (Mixi), social gaming are ways to reach these youngsters. Work with a gaming company and come up with something that will entice young Japanese to travel physically.

Social media is fragmented in Japan – no clear winner.

Trends in search

• Meta-search works in Japan because the market is so fragmented – 10,000 OTAs and 60,000 hotels. And people are shopping for price.

• Mobile is big in Japan. Twenty percent of traffic on travel.jp comes from mobile. 20% of domestic flights are booked through mobile.

• Watch the medium-sized OTAs – they are doing a lot of customisation and building trust among customers.

• Twitter is a growth phenomenon

http://www.webintravel.com//news/wit-day-one--japan-unravelled_694