Japan Travel Market Out of Favor with Europe

Yesterday, I had lunch with one of the chief directors of an organization called ANTOR. I work with him as an advisor for promotion for his country and help them with marketing and promotion for Japan.

While every other European nation has seen travel and travelers from Japan drop precipitously over these last 3 years his country has seen a 300% increase in travelers from Japan! Yes. Yes. Thank you for your kind applause. Thank you. Thank you.


... That is until the March 11, 2011 disaster struck. 


After that catastrophe, business across the board in Japan has dropped off a cliff for most sectors of the market and travel is one of the hardest hit. 


He related to me many of his worries and travails concerning Japan and the travel market.


Somethings he told me that really surprised me were that:


*After the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident in Japan, and some European nations citizens left Japan, many government tourism agencies have moved their offices permanently out of Japan and into China.


* Many European nations have slashed their promotional budgets for Japan. In his case, his advertising budget for Japan was cut by 70%!  

Annual ANTOR Japan event: Let's Go Kaigai!

*ANTOR Japan member countries have an annual summer promotion. Every year they have over 35 nations participate in this big promotion in Tokyo. This year they will have only 12 countries participating.


*The European Union Tourism Organization has cut the advertising budget  for Japan to.... Are you ready for it?.. To zero. ZERO! Zip. Nada. Nothing! They have completely given up on Japan and will not spend any more money on promotion on this country. They have redirected all the budget to China!


Sigh....


Most definitely a long hot summer coming for Japan. When will the tourism industry (all industry) recover in this country?

Croatia Tourism Launches New Internet Funnel Site for Japan

By Mike in Tokyo Rogers

Croatia is the Mediterranean the way it used to be. And it sure is!

The Croatian Tourism Bureau in Japan gets my award for being one of the first to capitalize on using  a .jp domain for the purposes of upping their Internet traffic and creating an "Internet funnel" to solve problems involved with using a .com domain with a .jp sub folder in Japan.

Dubrovnik

On Friday night, the Croatian Tourism Bureau launched www.croatia.jp and it looks fantastic! Croatia is definitely fast becoming the next place I want to visit on vacation. Check out the site, it is massive and has tons of beautiful photographs of just how beautiful Croatia is.

Croatia is on the Adriatic Sea and was, long ago, part of the Roman Empire so there's lots of architecture left over from those days... And, since Croatia was part of Eastern Europe for so long and has only opened up to the west for the last twenty years or so, the scenery, landscape and architecture are still pristine.

Imagine what Italy must have looked like 100 years ago... That's what Croatia looks like today. This is where I'm taking my children on vacation next time.

The Croatian Tourism Bureau took our advice and created the Internet funnel. Smart move. As explained in a former post at this very blog, in a search, Google.jp and Yahoo.jp must compete for numbers of results but they must also compete for quality of results on a search. That is why a .com/jp URL is not efficient at all.

This is Japan. Both Google and Yahoo must give priority on a search to local businesses in order to survive. That's not just because of what they want to do, that's smart business.

As I wrote on the very same blog concerning this very same subject:

There are other problems with a .com domain. For example, consider this; Japanese kanji are two bits. The English alphabet is one bit. So, a search engine that is designed for the west - say, mikerogers.com/japan - even with Japanese kanji inserted in the SEO - will often return "noise" if a Japanese person searches for, say, "travel in Europe" when they write down the search in Japanese kanji... I'll try it for you here： 海外旅行... A computer not configured for Japanese will return this as junk. It might look like Hieroglyphics.

The answer is to create an "Internet Funnel" using a .jp link to lay next to, or on top of, the current .com domain and act as a net or a funnel to bring in the Japanese traffic. The funnel is completely set-up in Japanese with Japanese SEO and key words. It is for Japan only. It's a simple concept that works every time.

So, for example, my USA company URL in Japan may be: www.myUSAcompany.com/japan. This puts my company URL in a sub folder so google.jp searches will not prioritize searches for me.... This hurts my business.

But! If I create a www.myUSAcompany.jp as a funnel, it captures all Japanese traffic for me first, then directs to my .com. This increases my rating; and I don't have to touch my basic .com site at all... The www.myUSAcompany.jp funnels all local traffic to my main domain and then a click of a button delivers my traffic to the home base. Simple and deadly efficient.

So hat's off to Croatia Tourism for their new .jp domain. I will keep you posted on the results as they come in. In the meantime, go check out the site. It is user friendly (of course, we helped them design it) and it solves the problem of HQ getting upset because it doesn't touch their page at all.... Like I said, it is a funnel. It catches and directs folks in Japan quickly and more efficiently to the main page!

After all, that's what an Internet funnel is for! Everyone's happy!

This is not heaven or Hawaii... It's Croatia!

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