Travel search meets location based mobile gaming in Japan

At the WIT Conference last October, Kei Shibata of Japan’s leading travel search site, travel.jp expressed his concern that younger Japanese were spending more time on gaming than travelling and he said one way travel companies could access this generation was to go to where they are.

This week, travel.jp announced its partnership with Colopl.jp (left), Japan’s number one location based mobile gaming service which he talked about at the conference.

“Now the users of Colopl.jp who typically play game while moving around the country can search the lowest airfare on Colopl.jp.

“We hope that this initiative could potentially boost the demand of travel in Japan which lags behind due to the 3.11 crisis by the earthquake and tsunami,” said Shibata.

Mobile gaming is huge in Japan, which leads the world in adoption. See this report.