Q: What are the three things you think will happen in the travel distribution, marketing and technology space in Japan in 2011?
Distribution: Direct channels bypassing travel agents (including OTAs) will emerge. Players like LCCs and hotels will increasingly start seeking the opportunity to reach the end users directly through meta search, general search engines, social media etc.

Marketing; More shift from offline to online. O2O concept may arise. (Market Online to identify the customers and send them to Offline.)

Technology: Social application technology including social gaming (like colopl.jp that I covered  at the Japan session during the WIT Conference) will apply more to the travel market.

Q: What did most people get wrong in Japan in 2010? And what did they most get right?
Wrong: People think mobile travel booking is here but still small?

Right: Japan travel market still suffers from the long time recession.

Q: What do you think they will most get wrong in 2011?
People think smart phones will dominate the mobile market everywhere including Japan but the regional/local mobile phones (handsets) will still keep the large market share here in 2011.  

Q: What are the three things they must do if they want to reinvigorate the Japanese travel market?
Target non Japanese tourists visiting Japan especially from mainland China. They are spending, spending, spending here as well!

Market through local media directly (including online meta search and perhaps even traditional media like TV which now costs you a way lower than it used to be) to reach the users directly.

Try something new to attract younger generations. Social gamings. Social applications. Mobile applications. Augmented realities. etc. etc.

Q: As the year winds to an end, what will you remember most about 2010?
Japan Airlines went bankrupt.

Q: What are you most looking forward to in 2011?
Together with the economic recovery, I would like to see more innovation in using new technology applying to the travel market here. We need to attract young and new users to grow the pie!

Featured image credit (Shibuya Crossing): Ockra/iStock