The supply chain of overseas traveling
Sometimes structure of supply chain of overseas traveling sounds confusing, though it’s not difficult. The one of the reasons is the term “Tour Operator”. Generally Tour Operator means the company sells package tour or whole seller in Europe. But “Tour Operator” in Japan often means “Land Operator”, which is mediating Japanese travel agencies, whole sellers and local suppliers. They arrange wide range of things from transportations, Japanese speaking guide, accommodations, restaurants, e.t.c. Usually Japanese travel agencies and whole sellers don’t arrange the products themselves, they just combine land arrangement and flights for package tours and group tours. So when your Japanese counterpart at workshop say Tour Operator, it’s Land Operator.
Nowadays Land Operators often have function to sell their products to individual travelers directly through their website. In this case, they are Tour Operators. For Land Operator function, they don’t need license, but for selling the products to individual travelers, they need license. Land Operators in Japan have association, OTOA (https://www.otoa.com/english/about.php ) (Overseas Tour Operator Association in Japan, this name is also confusing !) which has 138 members.
For national tourist organization, it’s quite important to develop new products by influencing on this supply chain. In many cases, it’s not easy to change the itinerary by introducing new products and travel trade is narrow minded to take risk for changing. So the best way is to involve all of them as stake holders for effective promotion. It’s necessary to ask cooperation from airlines and land operator as well as travel agencies and whole sellers. Even if we successfully persuade travel agencies and whole sellers to include new products, land operator might not ready to arrange it. In that case, it takes longer time to release the product or they might even oppose to include the new product.