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?
