Whale of a ride

The Japan Travel Bureau’s 100th-anniversary celebration in Japan today is somewhat muted, falling as it does one day after the anniversary of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

However, the company is marking that milestone in Hawaii with an $8 million reinvestment in the destination, which remains the top choice for Japan’s outbound travelers for the seventh year in a row despite changing travel patterns after the Great East Japan Earthquake.

On April 1, JTB plans to introduce a new road vehicle called "The Whale." The vehicle, which replaces JTB’s former Oli Oli trolley, has fins on its back to give it an exciting look and is built on a bus chassis to ensure that customers get a smooth ride, said Keiichi Tsujino, president and CEO of JTB Hawaii Inc.

The new whale is intended to help differentiate JTB from competitors that have been operating look-alikes of JTB’s old Oli Oli trolley, Tsujino said.

"When we started the Oli Oli, children cried to the mother, ‘I’d like to get on this tram,’ and they came to the office to purchase tickets," he said. "I think we can make such an impact with the whale. It’s a sign of optimism in the Japan market that we make this investment."

This change is the biggest in Hawaii since JTB’s 2010 local restructuring. At that time the company’s merger of JTB Overseas Development Corp. into JTB Hawaii Inc. brought together a network of travel services including hotel bookings, bus transportation, escorted tours, golf packages, shopping excursions, cellphone service, currency exchange, credit card support and travel insurance. JTB Hawaii even has its own bus company, TPT, headed up by Yujiro Kuwabara, a longtime JTB executive in the islands.

The merger freed the company of some administration expenses and allowed it to put more money into sales, Tsujino said.

JTB’s reinvestment in Hawaii and new emphasis on marketing bodes well for the destination, said Mike McCartney, president and CEO of the Hawaii Tourism Authority.

"This type of investment means that they are looking at Hawaii for the long term," McCartney said. "JTB’s commitment to Hawaii has been very important to our tourism economy and development. They have a rich history of providing travel. They are an important player in Japan’s history — they’ve helped bring the world to Japan and Japan to the world."

JTB has been in Hawaii since opening its first Hono­lulu branch office in the mid-1960s to capitalize on the Japa­nese government’s decision in the wake of the Olympic Games in Tokyo to allow citizens to travel to foreign countries, Tsujino said.

"The market has really grown. In 1965 there were 159,000 outbound travelers from Japan as compared to 16.6 million in 2010," he said.

JTB Hawaii, which reported annual sales of $271 million in 2010, today controls about a third of Hawaii’s wholesale Japan travel market. The company, which employs 530 workers on Oahu, Maui and Hawaii island, brings about 300,000 visitors from Japan to Hawaii each year. Thousands of JTB customers have been married or have honeymooned in Hawaii, and many of them have come to run the Hono­lulu Marathon or participate in the Hono­lulu Festival, a JTB-sponsored event since 1995.

While many competitors have come into the market since JTB’s entry, the company reports that business is on the upswing and their outlook is good. Tsujino said he and other company officials expect to bring a greater numbers of travelers from Japan to Hawaii in 2012, especially with the new flights that Hawaiian Airlines has added from Tokyo and Osaka, and will add from Fuku­oka in April.

"JTB has been a very important part of our success in the Japan marketplace," said Mark Dunkerley, president and CEO of Hawaiian Airlines. "They are a terrific business partner for us and absolutely terrific people."

Since Hawaiian Airlines started service to Japan 18 months ago, the carrier’s experience has been "uniformly good," Dunkerley said.

Like JTB, Dunkerley sees "some substantial grounds for optimism driven largely by the strength of the yen and the weakness of the U.S. dollar."

The number of outbound travelers from Japan is expected to rise 3 percent to 17.4 million this year due in part to the continuing high exchange rates and more flights to Asian destinations and Hawaii, according to information contained in JTB’s Prospective Travel Trends of 2012 report.

The isles in particular are expected to see an increase in repeat travelers, the JTB report said.