The Daunting Dimensions of JTB

When JTB, the largest Japan business in Japan, last month announced its acquisition of Panorama Tours—it is the largest travel company in Indonesia, which has twice the population (260.6 million vs. 126.3 million) of Japan—it served as an occasion for Hiroyuki Takahashi, JTB’s president and CEO to emphasize that the move meant that JTB would now “engage in full-fledged development of our business model, from one that has until now considered human interactions predominantly in terms of outbound travel from Japan, to a model that is global in outlook, with a focus on Asia.”

As a as part of its “Vision 2020,” the company, which already has a global footprint, expects to become the No. 1 travel agency in Asia. By 2020, JTB also seeks to boost its annual revenue from global operations, especially from trips by non-Japanese travelers, to ¥750 billion ($6.66 billion).

A week after the Panorama announcement, Shin Fujimoto, vice president and vice president and of head of leisure department, JTB USA—he is based in Torrance, California—took part in a session at NAJ’s RTO Summit in Marina del Rey, California and made a rare presentation that revealed the global reach and breadth of the company, including data regarding the size of different components of the Japanese market important to U.S. inbound tourism.

JTB’s Global Network: It is present in 37 countries, 107 cities, 418 offices (including affiliated sales shops). Information is as of September 2016. In the USA, some of its brands include Look JTB, MyBus East, MyBus West, Look AME and Look American Tours.