From the latest quarterly Survey of Travel Market Trends by the Japan Association of Travel Agents (JATA): “There are concerns that the political and economic policy of the U.S. government will impact overseas travel. If free trade and human exchange stagnate, this might influence overseas travel from Japan negatively.” This assessment came from an unidentified retailer cited in the JATA report, which went on to say that, although overseas travel has recovered from its lowest level of two years ago, the confidence of the Japanese travel trade that business will be good declines for the last quarter of 2018 and first quarter of 2019.
Though its information was processed in September, the Survey was not posted on the JATA website until late last month. Still, it remains an authoritative measure on how business it, and how the travel trade in Japan believes it will be during the next two business quarters.
In addition to the sobering note regarding the U.S., the Survey provides measures of how the trade sees certain segments in the Japanese performing. For instance, it notes that the demand for students travel during the summer holidays is 20 points stronger with educational tours showing a steady increase. And the outlook for both family travel and working women (office ladies) is up. The details of the above findings are in the tables below.
Before You Review the Tables: It is important to understand the methodology behind the compilation and preparation of the Survey of Travel Market Trends. JATA asks all member companies to register as survey monitors. It conducts the quarterly Survey of Travel Market Trends that involves 616 registered companies and publishes the results. The Survey of Travel Market Trends is designed to grasp trends in the travel market based on responses to questions on current conditions and those anticipated over the next three months. The survey asks participating companies to rate their sales results for each destination and customer segment by choosing from three categories: “good,” “average,” and “poor.” For items outside their business scope, respondents select “do not handle.” Each share of “good,” “average,” and “poor” is then divided respectively by the denominator, which is equal to the total number of responses minus the “do not handle” (including “no reply”) responses. Finally, each share is processed into a Diffusion Index (DI) by subtracting the percentage of “poor” from the percentage of “good. “The highest possible index figure is +100, and the lowest is -100.
A definition of each business classification and the number of survey respondents is shown below.
