JAPAN. JTB (Japan Travel Bureau) has just announced travel trends for the autumn overseas travel season based on sales of its LOOK JTB package tours.
Its latest report shows the number of Japanese departures and the growth rate for overseas travel both peaked on 23 September. But overall favourable trends continue from October centred on long (three-day) weekends, according to JTB, with the most rapid growth seen in travel to Europe, Oceania and Hawaii. Within Japan, growth was led by Okinawa. After October, JTB said bookings for Oceania and Hawaii grew rapidly.
With the greater acceptance of autumn holidays in Japan, the trend was to take days off immediately before or after the long (three day) weekend for travel.
The 23 September was the peak this year for both actual numbers and growth over the previous year and numbers recovered fully to the levels reached before the recent sharp declines but still down compared to a year ago (-28% down year-on-year in September, -17% in October and -12 % in November).
The clustering around the 23 September was particularly strong for short-break Asian destinations and new packages from JTB and other tour operators have encouraged this trend. Last year, most departures occurred on the first day of the three-day weekend, 14 September, said JTB.
This year, over the October to November period, there are another three such long weekends in the Japanese calendar, and travel demand is expected to rise, as it did in September, immediately before and after each weekend.
For domestic travel, JTB said the increases over the previous year were +10% to +25%, a trend maintained from the summer.
