The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan uses big data to boost tourism and has optimized the use of the Regional Economic and Society Analysis System (RESAS) for specific data for that purpose, the Bank Asian Development (ADB) noted.
With this, it allows searches aimed at both macro-analysis, including changes in the industrial structure, as well as micro-analysis, for example determining how long tourists stay in popular hotspots or by tracing the history of individual stores and offices in the commercial areas of the region.
Japan, with its high level of development, high income, market orientation and population of 126.2 million (as of March 1, 2019) remains the world’s third largest economy in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), after the United States and China.
According to the World Bank’s Economic Complexity Index, Japan continues to be the most diversified economy in the world, thanks to its exports of highly developed products, and its service sector, which is the backbone of the economy.
Big data
As for tourism, grid analysis enables users to obtain information on visitor movement patterns and monthly and hourly visits to locations in each grid, set at intervals of 500 million, so that they can identify places of interest. popular stop and design tourist routes that connect these sites.
Likewise, the spending habits of tourists by nationality are also recorded to develop marketing strategies tailored to the tourists’ reasons for visiting specific regions.
Since 2017, Global Blue TFS Japan, a tax-free shopping and processing service, has provided tax-free shopping data in RESAS, allowing a visual review of tax-free shopping trends and visualization of the demographics of buyers of products duty-free by prefecture.
RESAS can also be used by companies to create business opportunities or by regional residents to improve their communities.
The national government also supports activities that use RESAS.
Tourism
Additionally, RESAS conducts idea contests and workshops to discuss policy, so that a wide range of people can freely create ideas using RESAS and contribute to building their communities.
To support the expected tourism growth, the Ministry established the Omotenashi Platform, an IT-based system that encourages service providers to collaborate with each other and provide foreign visitors with high-quality services.
With the Omotenashi platform, companies can access, share and use personal data provided by consensus by tourists, while foreign visitors to Japan can enjoy advanced services and pleasant surroundings.
Through this platform, service providers can collect and analyze this data, which could be difficult to obtain by a single company or local authority, to improve service quality, develop new tourism products and cultivate new markets that meet the needs and preferences of tourists.
