Less Japanese travelers for holiday season

Some 52,000 Japanese tourists will travel to the CNMI and Guam between now until Jan. 3, 2000 for the holiday season, a decline of about 1.9 percent from last year’s total of 53,000, according to Japan Travel Bureau

It is not known how many of these travelers will eventually fly to Saipan, but JTB’s affiliates on the island, Tasi Tours & Transportation and Pacific Micronesia Tours, have commissioned 10 charter flights from Osaka to accommodate Japanese tourists vacationing here between Dec. 25 to Jan. 7.

Ikuo Katayama, president of Tasi and general manager for PMT, said they are handling an estimated 4,000 travelers during the Dec. 23-Jan. 3 period — up by 41.6 percent from last’s year figures.

He attributed the growth to the additional flights by All Nippon Airways from the Kansai area to Saipan, chartered by JTB World Vacation Western Japan to cash in on the expected influx of Japanese travelers who would want to celebrate the millennium on the island.
But JTB projected a slight decline in the number of overseas travels for Japanese for the 12-day period largely due to the Y2K problem, the inconvenient dates of Christmas and New Year holidays as well as the hype on the millennium celebration.

These projections were a result of a survey conducted by the world’s biggest tour operator last November at 200 sales offices throughout Japan on some 2,200 men and women over 18 years old who plan to travel over this period.

A big drop

About 559,000 people will fly out of Japan for trips abroad, down by 11.4 percent from 631,000 recorded over the same period in 1998-99, according to its report on travel trends for this yearend.

This is the third year in a row that estimated number of overseas travelers from the world’s second largest economy has slipped and the fifth time pegged at less than 600,000.

This drop, it added, is due to a number of unusual factors, including:

– the unfavorable sequences of holiday dates;

– the fact that a lot of people will be working to prevent any computer glitches associated with the Y2K bug;

– a reduction in the tour packages being offered, especially to the U.S. and Europe, where hotels are fully booked and prices have skyrocketed; or

– a deliberate decision not to travel during this period.

The survey also showed an increase in the fraction of people listing down work as the reason for not traveling this holiday season, which accounted for 25.8 of the respondents. Others considered the Y2K problem and the expensive millennium tour packages as disincentives.

The fears on possible air disaster at the turn of the century — which could be triggered by computers unable to read the date as 2000 — also contributed to the slide as travel packages involving such a date have not been offered by tour operators and flights scheduled for Dec. 31 have been canceled by some airlines for certain destinations, according to the report.

Expenditures up

But average expenditures for overseas trips from Dec. 23-Jan. 3 period are projected to shot up by 2.2 percent, from $2,246 per person in 1998-99 to $2,295 for this year on the heels of regaining strength of yen vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar.

While average time spent on vacation is cut short slightly, there is a marked increase in the volume of tourists opting to spend three days and two nights on vacation, which eat up nearly 32 percent of those surveyed.

For this year, Korea has become the preferred choice by Japanese as destination with over 82,000 people booked to travel there, edging out perennial winner Hawaii and Europe.

Asia remains the top destination, cornering almost half of the total number of overseas travelers with 263,000 people, followed by the U.S. and Canada, including Guam and Saipan, with 190,000; Europe, 62,000; and Oceania, including Australia and South Pacific, 36,000.

Bookings made by JTB indicated that many Japanese will depart on Dec. 30, followed by the 29th and Jan. 3, meaning that they want to spend their New Year holidays later than usual.