ALL Nippon Airways (ANA) has announced that it will add a direct route from Tokyo’s Narita International Airport to Brussels from its winter 2015 schedule.
The new route will be the airline’s sixth direct route into Europe, operating in parallel with flights from either Narita or Haneda airports to London, Paris, Munich, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf, and has been welcomed by the Japanese travel industry.
“We are seeing so many inbound visitors to Japan from Europe that this makes perfect sense,” Yoko Ogata, manager of the International Travel Division of Nippon Travel Agency, told TTG Asia e-Daily.
With some promotion, Japanese tourists who have already visited some of Europe’s main tourist cities could be convinced to try something new in the form of the Benelux countries, she said.
“This part of Europe is relatively under-developed in terms of visits by Japanese tourists, but there is no reason why it could not become a new hot spot for visitors,” observed Ogata.
ANA intends to announce further details of the service later in the year, but a spokeswoman for the company told TTG Asia e-Daily that it is part of ANA’s ambitious expansion plans.
“Brussels has been a candidate for this expansion for a long time as we know there is a large Japanese community there and that many Japanese companies have their European bases there,” said Maho Ito.
“And we hope that we will be able to attract both inbound tourists to Japan from that part of Europe and take more Japanese tourists to a new destination,” she added.
