Demand for experience-based travel, particularly in the areas of well-being and the great outdoors, has been growing pre-pandemic, prompting Tokyo’s tourism sector to work hard at securing its share of the market. Opportunities for unique experiences and activities now abound in the Japanese capital, including in rural and off-the-beaten-track parts of the city, giving even the most adventurous and curious travellers something new to try.
As Tokyo has more than 100 rivers and canals flowing beneath her, experiences centred on her waterways have enjoyed particular growth. Tokyo Great Kayaking Tour offers day and evening tours in the canals while Outdoor Sports Club Zac offers SUP (stand up paddle) experiences and tours in the vicinity of Tokyo Sky Tree.
Before the outbreak of Covid-19, Tokyo Great Tours, which operates outdoor sightseeing tours on kayaks and bicycles as well as by running, had enjoyed a boom in sales. Yukiko Koezuka, owner and guide, attributed growth to an increase in the number of visitors to Tokyo and demand from repeat visitors seeking new activities.
Once international travel resumes, she expects sales to rebound and continue to experience an uptick as people seek outdoors activities that promote a sense of well-being and allow for social distancing.
“Even during the Covid-19 situation, (local) people who have booked our kayak tours say they feel safe to join as they can keep their distance from others,” she said.
Tokyo is also preparing to welcome more tourists to her subtropical chain of islands, located about an hour by plane from Haneda Airport or up to 11 hours by boat from Takeshiba port in central Tokyo.
Tokyo Metropolitan Government has stepped up its promotion of the archipelago to tourists, while travel marketplaces like Voyagin have packaged itineraries and experiences under the slogan of “Tokyo’s Island Getaway.” These experiences include outdoor pursuits such as hiking, scuba diving and meeting sea turtles as well as classes to make island silk or prepare fresh mountain herbs. There are also night activities such as night snorkelling and a starlight and forest exploration tour.
Tokyo can expect to see more of such unique offerings as travel businesses prepare to attract tourists back in confidence after the pandemic, according to industry experts. Options that allow people to be outside or in small, well-managed groups with infection control measures are likely to be the first to recover, even more so if those options are for something that visitors cannot enjoy elsewhere.
Kyoko Nagano, founder of Mypal Inc, a Tokyo-based agency for Japanese cultural experts and tourism-related business, hopes to resume the company’s vast range of traditional craft, cooking and cultural classes, some of which attracted more than 200 tourists per month in 2019.
Two classes popular for their uniqueness were incense making and kodo (the way of incense), one of the three major classical arts along with sado (tea ceremony) and kado (flower arrangement) that women of refinement were expected to learn in ancient Japan. Kodo involves burning incense and guessing its fragrance.
“Tea ceremony has become popular among tourists, but incense is not so known and there are few teachers of it in Japan,” Nagano said, adding that beginner classes hosted by a 90-year-old kodo master pre-pandemic were mostly attended by travellers from the Middle East and France.
Independent travel options and self-contained or exclusive accommodation are also seeing a boom due to the pandemic.
Jared Campion, founder of Tokyo-based campervan rental company Dream Drive, has seen a rise in bookings in 2020 and expects even better numbers this year.
“Japan has great roads, (many) hot spring bathhouses and amazing places to explore, so (she is) perfect for campervan travel,” he said.
And with so much to see and do in the capital, tourism players are working hard to encourage visitors to travel around rural as well as central Tokyo.
After a year of being homebound, travellers are looking to level up their travel plans in 2021 by splurging on luxury accommodation and destinations, and taking multiple trips, according to a TripAdvisor study.
The research was based on global traveller search behaviours and sentiment data across six markets, namely, the US, the UK, Australia, Italy, Japan and Singapore.
It found that having sacrificed vacation time in 2020, people want to make this year count by spending more on luxury lodging and far-flung destinations. Out with the weekend backpacking and budget hotels, and in with the beachside villas and picture-perfect locations.
Despite the financial impact of Covid-19 hitting many hard, in the first three weeks of January, global travellers on TripAdvisor were searching for pricier trips than they had during the same period in the past two years.
In fact, the average cost of a single future trip in 2021 that travellers globally are planning on TripAdvisor has jumped 13 per cent since January 2019. In the UK and Singapore, that rises even more significantly, to an increase of 64 per cent and 45 per cent, respectively, since 2019.
When looking at the international destinations showing the biggest increase in hotel searches for trips planned in 2021, based on searches in the first two weeks of January (versus the same period in 2020), it is clear to see where some of those dollars may be going.
In Asia-Pacific, travellers are longing for high-end trips to visit cities like Singapore, Bangkok and Dubai. Meanwhile, travellers in Brazil, Germany and Spain prefer the overwater bungalows and pristine waters of Bora Bora and the Maldives.
These same trends can be seen in the destinations that are popping up on the TripAdvisor travel wishlist – spots people have been “saving” on the platform in the last 12 months.
Some of the projected increased travel spend seen on TripAdvisor extends to the choice of accommodation, with more than one in ten (11 per cent) global travellers planning to go luxe on accommodation in 2021.
In fact, of the six nations surveyed, travellers from Singapore and the US are the most likely to have already booked a luxury hotel stay in 2021 – almost one in five have already done so (19 per cent and 18 per cent, respectively), compared to the global average of one in seven (14 per cent).
Search behaviour for luxe accommodations on TripAdvisor in January 2021 also reveal high search demand for luxury beach resorts and luxury spa resorts – which appeared to be recovering the fastest year-on-year.
The 2021 travel splurge is also apparent in the number of trips travellers plan to take throughout the year. More than a quarter of Singaporeans (28 per cent) surveyed said that they plan to take three or more international trips in 2021 – this is ahead of the global average of 24 per cent.
Val Anthony, senior research analyst, Tripadvisor, said: “2020 was a year the world’s horizons narrowed by necessity, but that has only made travellers everywhere more determined than ever to spend big on adventure and exploration in 2021, and we are seeing that in the trips millions are planning around the world.”