Category of travel companies
There are surprisingly 11,107 travel agents in the Japanese market. Naturally the size varies from major one such as JTB with 30,000 staff to small family agents.
So capability, capacity, client profile and the way of business are quite different between them. We can categorize them into roughly three in the Japanese Travel Agency Act, which is made by the Japan Tourism Agency and Consumer Affairs Agency.
First Category ( 688 companies)
Travel companies that organize and sell overseas and domestic package tours and also make travel arrangements for clients as agents.Their base asset should be more than 30 million Japanese Yen. They areauthorized by the Commissioner of the Japan Tourism Agency and participate in the Compensation Security Bond System, which costs at least 70 million Japanese Yen according to their turnover in the previous fiscal year.
Second Category(2,980 companies)
Travel companies that organize domestic package tours and sell overseas and domestic tours, make arrangements for overseas and domestic tours and make travel arrangements for clients as an agent. Their base asset should be more than 7 million Japanese Yen and they are authorized by the Governor General in prefectures across Japan. They need to participate in the Compensation Security Bond System, which costs at least 11 million Japanese Yen according to their turnover in the previous fiscal year.
Third Category(5,816 companies)
Travel companies that sell overseas and domestic tours, and also make travel arrangements for clients as an agent. These travel companies also sell domestic package tours in specific regions with specific payment conditions. Their base asset should be more than 3 million Japanese Yen. They are authorized by the Governor General in prefectures across Japan and should participate in the Compensation Security Bond System, which costs at least 3 million Japanese Yen according to their turnover in the previous fiscal year.
For national tourism organizations, the main target is the first category because most of the cases, they have both planning and sales functions for overseas traveling. The whole sellers in the first category have only planning capability and delegate sales to other companies and retailors. On top of providing destination knowhow to the first category, it’s important to spread out same information to the second and the third categories for actual sales at offices and online. Finally the ranking of Gross booking and turnover in 2018 is as follows:
1, JTB Group
2, H.I.S.
3, KNT-CT Holdings
4, Nippon Travel Agency
5, Hankyu Travel International
6, JALPAK
7, ANA Sales
8, Tobu Top Tours
9, Evolable Asia (Air Trip)
10, JR Tokai Tours
