Japanese now touring alone

Press, 27 February 1984, Page 4

Japanese now touring alone

NZPA staff correspondent Tokyo The sight of Japanese tourists in New Zealand on big package tours could soon become a thing of the past, according to Mr David Lynch, manager of the Government Tourist Office in Japan.

A combination of the recession, pressure by the Government’s fair trade office to reduce nonmonetary bonuses, and changing travel habits among the young had caused the group travel business to decline, he said.

Growth in tourist numbers leaving Japan had slowed drastically over the

last two years to about 2 per cent a year, after the 30 to 40 per cent rises of previous years, although numbers over all were still slowly rising.

New Zealand had exceeded the average growth, with regular increases in double figures, Mr Lynch said.

Traditionally, Japanese companies had sponsored annual holidays for groups of their employees, but this trade had slowed.

“What is happening rapidly now is that more and more Japanese are wanting to travel as individuals,” said Mr Lynch. The change had caught the Japanese travel trade unprepared.

“They had always assumed Japanese wanted to travel in big groups. Now they are frantically trying to work out what to do when they just get one or two bookings at a time. There is not the same profit for them in dealing with travellers on an individual basis.”

New Zealand was equipped to handle the individual traveller, but the Japanese travel trade was not, Mr Lynch said. An increasing number of individual travellers could strain New Zealand’s very limited number of Japanese-speaking tourist guides. Already the changing travel trend was taxing the

staff of the Government Tourist Office in Tokyo, where more than 100 Japanese a day sometimes sought information on itineraries that they could take as individuals in New Zealand but which the agencies were not handling, said Mr Lynch. Mr Lynch said some of the Japanese companies were starting to offer “a la carte” deals, where individual travellers could pick out various sections of different tour plans. Profits for some travel companies had fallen and fierce price-cutting was taking place on fares to some destinations. The Hawaiian market, a traditional tourist destina-

Civil IVI VIIV VUMUUV'TV, l,ad almost collapsed. That was bad for New Zealand, as it was possible to buy a Hawaiian package holiday for a third of the cost of one to New Zealand. However, Mr Lynch said, people were tired of the poor arrangements and quality of the tours to Hawaii. They were looking for other desitnations. Young Japanese people travelling now were more adventurous and discriminating. Many were interested in working holidays in such places as Australia and New Zealand. “But they are not travelling in big numbers together any more,” Mr Lynch said.