65% of Japanese use Internet to book travels

Japan has survived another “Golden Week” earlier this month. “Golden Week” is one of the biggest leisure travel weeks in Japan usually starts at the end of the April and lasts for about a week.

According to Overture Japan’s survey against 1000 people in 20s, 30s and 40s, 65% of them went “online” to research and to book the trip, followed by “travel magazines (17.4%) and “travel agencies (17%).  Even the ones who did book the trip at the agencies, many of them first researched the information online.

Of course, Internet doesn’t mean just the search engines. Many travel portal sites and the booking sites such as Yahoo Travel, Rakuten Travel and Arukikata play a big part in people’s research process. If you are a travel related site owner, you should check your site’s visibility in the search results at these portal sites as well as Yahoo Japan and Google Japan.