Travel & Spending: The Japan Market

Many travel experts have written off the Japan market as a fast-fading market, due to the stagnant per pax spending resulting from the bursting of Japan's bubble economy in the early 1990's. However, Japan as a nation still ranks in the top 4 when it comes to per capita travel expenditures for overseas travel.

In 2005, Japan had USD $37.5 Billion in overseas travel expenditures, behind Germany ($72.7B), United States ($69.2B), United Kingdom ($59.6B). Following Japan, was France at $31.2 Billion.

Expedia Inc., the world's largest online travel company, has not lost sight of the potential this market holds for its business. The company recently launched its first Japanese Web site expedia.co.jp .

The new Expedia (Nasdaq: EXPE) site allows Japanese travelers to select from more than 30,000 properties worldwide. Japanese consumers were already the biggest single group of visitors to the U.S. site outside North America.

Barney Harford, president of Expedia Asia Pacific, stated, "Japan represents the second largest travel market in the world and is an extremely important part of Expedia's long term growth strategy."

The Expedia site has independent and objective property overviews, in Japanese, 360-degree virtual tours of hotels, and other features. With Expedia accounting for 37 million room night bookings annually, they will further increase bookings by catering to the growing number of independent Japanese travelers who are comfortable using technology.

Businesses that want a piece of the Japanese travel market pie should look to the changes occurring in Japanese society and determine new ways to capture the attention of Japan's consumers. This will take more than just looking at the previous year's arrival statistics and exit surveys from those who already made the trip to your destination. What are you doing for the segment of the market that is yet untapped?

Tourism Vs. Hospitality Managment

Tourism and Hospitality Management are oftentimes used interchangeably when discussing the academic discipline offered in many colleges and universities around the world. With growing interest in both domestic and overseas travel, tourism and hospitality management are both gaining attention as serious research areas. But wait a second… are these two one and the same?

Tourism

There is an official definition provided by the World Tourism Organization. It states that “tourism comprises the activities of persons traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited” (World Tourism Organization, 2006). This definition covers a broad range of travel activity including educational travel, which has become extremely popular with overseas tourists from Asian countries like Japan and Korea.

For tourism to successful, there is the concept of sustainability that must be considered. The United Nations Brundtland Report as “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” defines sustainability or sustainable development. On the other hand, pursuing “sustainable tourism” is just not good enough. If “sustainable tourism” is tourism which can maintain its viability in an area for an indefinite period of time,” it takes on a tourism-centric view. The implication with sustainable tourism is that the world revolves around tourism and the needs of important stakeholders, like members of the local community, the public sector, other industries, etc., take a back seat to keep tourism going. With the typical balanced study of tourism, scholars examine the place that tourism takes in the overall scheme of things. There needs to be a balance in satisfying the needs of hosts and host communities, the tourists, and the tourism industry.

Hospitality Management

Hospitality management is the name given to the collegiate academic major in which students are taught the business of running hotels, restaurants, and travel and tourism-related business. Typically, under Hospitality Management, courses like Front Desk Management, Food and Beverage Management, Gaming, and Guest Database Management Systems are taught. Obviously, the bulk of these courses are geared towards those who currently are working for a private sector employer, or for those who desire to land a job with one.

Hospitality Management is business-oriented and takes on a different focus when compared with a tourism program, which in most cases provide a balanced view of how tourism as an industry relates with hosts and host communities, as well as tourists.

Naturally, there is a place for both Tourism and Hospitality to be studied to better prepare individuals and communities for decisions concerning the industry that will have long-term implications. For starters, let’s clear up the distinction between Tourism and Hospitality Management. By doing so, we can minimize the chances of neglecting to include some key components required for a successful tourism industry in our destinations.