Tourism Agency survey – 96 percent satisfied

Tourism Agency survey - 96 percent satisfied

Broken down into purposes of travel, people’s satisfaction and intention to visit again.


January 9, 2013　Ayako Sakaguchi of Ryukyu Shimpo

On January 7, the Japan Tourism Agency released results of a survey of travel and tourism trends such as satisfaction and intention to re-visit. According to the survey, focusing on those who traveled to domestic tourist spots, Okinawa accounted for 29.5 percent of the people who answered “very satisfied,” which is the highest percentage of the ten regions nationwide. While the tourists who answered that “I definitely think so,” to the question of whether you will visit Okinawa again within one year was 21.8 percent of the total, which is the highest by region, the percentage of visitors who answered “I do not think so,” was 27.7 percent, which is also the highest among the regions. Some experts speculate that expensive air-transport costs and the long distance compared to the other regions, is behind the high-rate of the people who say they do not want to re-visit.

Okinawa scored 96.2 percent, which is the largest portion of the people who answered that they were “satisfied,” followed by Kanto (21.5 percent), Kinki (21.3 percent), Hokkaido (20.2 percent) and Shikoku with the lowest percentage of 10.5.

Yoshihiro Sugimoto, the general manager of the Naha Branch of the Bank of Japan, commented, “The survey is a good result for Okinawa in terms of the very high level of satisfaction. However, the problem remains that there is a marked difference between satisfaction in the first visit and the intention to visit again, and that the two are not linked. It is important to increase the repeater rate, and not to rely on one-stay type tourists.”

Yoshiro Shimoji, the deputy director general in charge of tourism in the Okinawa Prefectural Government, said, “It could be the effect of the season when tourists cannot enjoy the sea or due to bad weather. We should not read too much into the survey results because tourists all have different needs and perceptions.”

The survey was carried out by distributing the questionnaire to about 50000 people chosen at random nationwide. The Japan Tourism Agency collated the results from the 24491 responses during the period from January until June 2012. Of the respondents, 150 people had visited Okinawa very recently.

(English translation by T&CT, Mark Ealey)

Go to Japanese


　


Previous Article:
Next Article:

[Similar Articles]