Japan Productivity Center for Socio-Economic Development (President, Mr. Tsuneaki Taniguchi) established Tourism Area Management Forum (Principal Members: Mr. Wataru Aso, Governor of Fukushima Prefecture, Mr. Hiroshi Suda, Advisor of Central Japan Railway Co., Mr. Shinji Fukukawa, Chairman of Machine Industrial Memorial Foundation, Mr. Teruhiko Mochizuki, Professor of Tama University) at 15:00 of Thursday, February 28. The Forum aimed to develop regional economy by promoting tourism through cooperation of private sector and regional governments.

30 companies, 16 prefectures, 62 cities, districts and towns and 67 experts and executives participated in the establishment of the Forum. The Forum would engage in the creation of new region-led tourism business model, productivity improvement of tourism and leisure industry, promotion of successive holidays, etc.

In the kick-off ceremony, the result of Survey of Japanese Travel was also announced. The survey was conducted to understand how Japanese felt about travel and what were their needs and to utilize the result in the future activities of the Forum. Summary of the result was as follows.

Stimulate Japanese economy through reform of paid holidays.
The utilization rate of annual paid holidays in Japan remained low at less than 50%. The survey asked if workers should take more days off. 88.4% responded, "the Japanese economy will be revitalized if all workers take enough days off." Reform of paid holidays could be a key to economic improvement because it would promote work-life balance and tourism of local areas. The challenge was how to form the consensus over the vision of "take days off to revitalize Japan."

Changing value of travel. Keywords were "discovery, relationship, emotion, stay."
People's value and needs on domestic trips were also changing drastically. About 60% responded that they "want to visit somewhere that something new can be found, can be emotional or where relationship can be built and the place need not be a famous tourism destination." Regarding the style of the travel, 75.2% said that they "would rather stay in the same place for a while." This type of travel was particularly preferred by the Japanese baby boom generation. Such a trend meant that areas not well known as tourist attraction could thrive with tourism activities if they addressed the new needs. At the same time, even well known tourist destinations cannot just rely on the names and attractions anymore.

Let the kids travel if you love them.
The survey also asked about people's perceived benefit of kids' travel on their academic achievement. 90.8% of respondents said, "we should let the kids travel a lot because travel increases the breadth of knowledge and develop capability to think by oneself." Only 9.2% said, "kids should develop academic capability in schools and cram schools rather than travel." While school hours were likely to be extended due to current debate on education, we should pay more attention to the rich benefits that travel could bring upon kids.