Japan Experience

10,000!! This is the amount of Japanese train tickets we have sold since March 1st, 2024, when we launched our new online train ticket booking platform! 🚄💺 With a train request every 3 seconds and more than 600,000 departures, our train ticket booking platform is the result of 6 months of hard work and has turned into a huge success. A year ago, the situation was quite different! When tour operators such as Japan Experience were gradually overcoming the setbacks caused by COVID-19, JR companies announced they would increase by 70% the price of the Japan Rail Pass, the no-brainer traveler pass for any trip to Japan. Not only was the reaction of customers and media to that unreasonable rise extremely negative - we could see that more than half of travelers would opt for train tickets rather than acquiring the Japan National Rail Pass - but at the same time over 80% of Japan Experience's activity relied on the sales of JR Pass. However, this new challenge turned into a growth opportunity as we were prepared! 5 years ago, Xavier Marchand and I made the decision to invest substantially in the digital platform of Japan Experience, which has now proven to be resilient. 🚀 The rapid success of our new booking platform in just a few weeks highlights the effectiveness of our approach to making travel to Japan both appealing and straightforward. We also managed this feat through a strategic partnership with Japan Railways (JR), the country’s first railway company through a special relationship we developed over the years. So what can we learn from this launch?  💡 Travelers are more aware of their options and are comparing them more, and we can see that travelers now favor train tickets instead of the JR Pass. ⛔ Japanese institutions and decision makers are not making it easy for travelers to Japan right now.  🎯 Industry leaders that make it easier for travelers to come to Japan and move around the country play a major role and will continue to do so. Last, I would like to thank our digital team, who worked tirelessly to meet the deadline 💪 Head here to explore our 600,000 train departures across all our available routes! → https://lnkd.in/gmb72hgA