JAPAN may have ceded its position as Asia-Pacific’s largest travel market to China, but it will retain the crown as the region’s biggest leisure and unmanaged business travel market for online bookings.
According to PhocusWright’s Japan Online Travel Review, the East Asian nation continues to face economic stagnation and a sluggish recovery from the March 2011 earthquake. Growth in the overall travel market has been forecast to slow to two per cent by 2015.
But Japan’s online travel market, the biggest in Asia-Pacific and third largest in the world, is proving to be the silver lining. The study predicted that online travel would sustain double-digit growth through 2014.
“Japan’s travel industry has endured numerous challenges to growth for some time now, but the country’s substantial online travel market should not be written off,” said Douglas Quinby, senior director, research, PhocusWright.
“In fact, by 2015, the value of Japan’s online travel gross bookings will still be more than double that of China.”
Aviation was also another bright spot. The emergence of LCCs – some with the backing of legacy carriers – has helped to spur air travel demand.
The report also expected that supplier websites, buoyed by LCC gains, would grow faster than OTAs through 2015.
