Japan's business image hurts tourism
By David Butts
Advertiser Staff Writer
How can you market a mature tourist destination when many travelers are opting for lower-cost locales such as Thailand or China, and businesses can no longer afford to bring in hundreds of employees on incentive tours?
What sounds like the challenge facing Hawai'i actually is a recent description of Japan. And for Hawai'i's tourism industry — which is always looking for ways to attract more Japanese to the Islands — looking at how Japan goes about enticing visitors may offer some insights.
The world's second-largest economy sends about 16 million of its citizens overseas each year, including about 1.5 million to Hawai'i, but attracts fewer than 5 million visitors to its own shores.
At the American Society of Travel Agents' recently concluded World Travel Congress, three Japanese organizations were pushing their country to the crowd of mostly Mainland-based travel agents at the Hawai'i Convention Center.
Americans see Japan as a business destination, said Akio Kambara, the head of inbound travel for JTB, Japan's largest travel agency.
Leisure travelers stay away from Japan because they think it is too expensive, too far and too inscrutable, Kambara said. The Japanese travel industry's first mission is to counter that image.
"I'm irritated," Kambara said. "Why do they say it's too expensive?"
Kambara says prices have dropped in recent years, and a room in a first-class hotel in Tokyo can be had for as little as $150 a night. A gyudon, or luncheon bowl of grilled beef on rice, goes for $2.40. A McDonald's hamburger sells for about 50 cents.
The Japanese government is preparing to spend about $25 million to promote the country in a visit-Japan campaign next year, Kambara said. Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, best known as co-author of the 1989 book "The Japan That Can Say No," has signed off on a "Yes! Tokyo" tourism campaign, Kambara said.
The country also should target special-interest tourists, Kambara says.
Bird watchers could go to see cranes in Hokkaido. Gardeners can study the Japanese way of creating an ocean vista with carefully raked white pebbles. Theater buffs can attend kabuki shows and go backstage for lessons on makeup and movement. Students of architecture can tour ancient temples and futuristic corporate headquarters that are only blocks apart.
Japanese matsuri, or festivals, with their drumming and dancing, are an easy way for tourists to interact in a party atmosphere with everyday Japanese. Pottery tours could explore the wide variety of Japanese ceramics.
While these niche tours may work, Kambara said that the government and official tourist organizations are too old and set in their ways to promote them properly.
The Japan National Tourist Organization's booth at the convention center displayed pamphlets almost identical to the ones they were handing out more than 20 years ago.
Kambara says he is envious of New York's tourism promotion materials that show people in motion — dancing, walking, talking. It's dynamic and energetic. Japanese brochures show Mount Fuji surrounded by cherry blossoms. "Very silent and quiet," Kambara says.
The lack of information in English is another barrier. Kambara tells of a temple in Kyoto that is popular with young Japanese because it brings good luck in love. It has two large stones placed 40 feet apart. It is said that if you can successfully walk from one to the other with your eyes closed, your amorous wishes will be fulfilled. The problem is that it isn't explained in any English materials on the temple, Kambara said.
So Japan is largely left with the business travelers.
"Japan's economy is going down, so anyone can purchase Japanese land and companies cheaply. That's why people are coming," Kambara said. "You see a lot of American businessmen walking around looking to buy."
You don't have to go far to see how entrenched the image problem is for Japan.
At the booth next to Kambara's, Cody Rogers, a marketing manager with All Nippon Airways, says plainly: "Japan is still a business destination. I personally wouldn't go there as a tourist."
