2018 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
An Exploratory Investigation of Japanese Inbound Tourism Distribution Channels
| Project/Area Number |
18K01870
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| Research Institution | Otaru University of Commerce |
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Principal Investigator |
王 力勇 小樽商科大学, 商学部, 准教授 (70772466)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
Praet Carolus 小樽商科大学, 商学部, 教授 (40292081)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2018-04-01 – 2021-03-31
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| Keywords | Distribution channels / Outbound tour operator / Qualitative research / In-depth interview |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
In FY 2018, we first focused on literature review in the field of distribution channels and in particular tourism distribution channels. unlike the research gap on Japanese tourism distribution channels, a considerable volume of studies have beed conducted overseas. However, nearly all of them have concentrated on the high-volume, low-price travel market. In recent years, the growth in global gross domestic product and high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) have caused the luxury travel market to expand. The same tendency is occurring in Japanese inbound travel market.Based on the literature review and in order to contribute more both to the theoretical research gap and tourism practitioners, we shifted the research direction relatively and focused more on inbound luxury tourism distribution channels in Japan.
Second, PI Wang interviewed informants from 17 different outbound tour operators, mainly targeting on luxury travel market. Interviews were first conducted with tradeshow participants during the ILTM Cannes (International Luxury Travel Market, the largest global B2B tradeshow specializing in luxury travel) in December. PI Wang also interviewed several informants in Paris. We have collected interview data from overseas much more than we planed, which is a big plus to our research.
Third, we have summarized a part of our interview results and submitted to an international academic conference and are waiting for peer review result currently.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
1: Research has progressed more than it was originally planned.
Reason
Regarding the data size, we have conducted much more than what we planned and have collected interview data from 17 different outbound tour operators. This is a big plus to our research and helps understand tourism distribution channels deeper and better. The regional coverage of informants is also wider than we planned, including Asia, EU, Russia and North America.
On the other hand, we could not conducted the interviews with suppliers including hoteliers and DMCs in Hokkaido. We originally scheduled those interviews in September and October of 2018. However, because of the serious earthquake in Hokkaido, those hoteliers and DMCs were busy with arrangements effected by the earthquake. We will conduct those interviews in FY 2019.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
IN FY2019 and FY 2020, we will focus mainly on the relationships between inbound tourism distribution channel participants.
First, we will focus on the effect of dynamic power changes between suppliers and intermediaries due to rapid increase of inbound tourists to Japan in recent years and conduct in-depth interviews. Meantime during the interviews, we will also investigate how they develop and manage their distribution channel strategies.
Second, we will concentrate on the partnership between inbound tour operators and overseas travel agencies / tour operators through questionnaire survey. As we distribute questionnaires to those travel companies which are always busy, we may face difficulty of low response rate. We need to devise methods of distributing the survey.
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| Causes of Carryover |
1. Due to unavailability of RA, PI Wang conducted the data arrangement by himself and saved a large amount of budget.
2. In order to use the budget more properly, PI Wang went to overseas and conducted the interviews by himself and saved the part for travel by CR.
3. We will use the incurring amount of the budget for conducting more interviews, arranging research data, and presenting research results in international academic conferences.
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