More Japan holidays help spur international travel boom

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- Japanese tourists are flooding overseas this year as never before.

They bask on Balinese beaches, meander through Madrid museums, and pack planes throughout the world.

Behind it all is a domestic law that increased the number of long weekends in the hope people would have more fun and spend more money, boosting the lagging Japanese economy.

Instead, as the first year of the "Happy Monday" plan nears an end, people are traveling overseas in record numbers -- and spending their money there.

"The number of people going abroad is up, up, up," said Shinichi Hayashi, at budget ticket agency Across. "And one of the biggest reasons for this is definitely the extra holidays."

As a result, officials estimate, the number of Japanese overseas travelers this year may top 17 million for the first time.

Some 16.4 million people went abroad in 1999.

"All our figures are outpacing last year's," said Tsuguo Chihara at Japan Travel Bureau, one of Japan's largest travel agencies. "For the period from April to August, foreign travel rose by 6.7 percent over 1999."

"But during that same period, domestic travel has fallen -- it's down nearly 2 percent."

Japan has 14 national holidays, more than many countries, and they are welcome relief to Japan's corporate soldiers, who find it hard to take paid vacation because of a business culture that emphasizes self-sacrifice and hard work.

Until this year, though, all holidays were celebrated on a specific date no matter when it fell in the calendar, making long weekends purely a matter of chance.

Now, thanks to the 1998 passage of the "Happy Monday Law," the second Monday in January and the second Monday of October are always holidays and the weekends will always be long.

And while travel agents say a stronger yen -- it hovered around 107 to the dollar for much of this summer, compared to 120 last summer -- and a slight improvement in Japan's economy have also contributed to the overseas travel boom, the biggest factor is the longer weekends.

In addition, several holidays have fallen on Friday or Monday purely by chance, increasing the number of long weekends.

An extra boost has come from a growing number of still hardy senior citizens, whose thrift and hard work in their younger years have paid off by giving them a big pool of savings -- which many are now using to see the world.

In 1999, for example, the number of 60-something women travelers rose 12.1 percent from the previous year, Travel Bureau figures show, compared to an overall rise of 2.6 percent.

This year appears no different. More than half the passengers on an early September flight from Tokyo to Bangkok were senior citizens, many of them women in jovial and noisy groups.

"They've worked hard all their lives," said Yasuo Ochi at the Dentsu Institute of Life Studies. "Now is the time for fun."

The increasing numbers of travelers not chained to the school calendar means travel patterns are changing as well. Autumn and spring, formerly times of empty planes and travel bargains, are now becoming more crowded and expensive.

Yet even while overseas, Japanese travelers remain canny consumers, with a keen eye for bargains.

Cost cutting extends to all parts of a trip, prompting a switch in destinations. Hong Kong, Singapore and France have yielded to less expensive places like Korea, Thailand and Italy. Bali and Vietnam are so popular that tickets can be hard to snag.

A major part of the current boom is also the surging popularity of package tours, sometimes of astonishing value.

A five-day October stay in Bali, for example, runs from 62,800 yen ($583) to 81,000 yen ($752), hotels and plane fare included. But a round-trip ticket from Tokyo alone costs around 63,000 yen ($586) -- and that's if booked through a cut-price agency.

In contrast, a two-day domestic tour to the ancient capital of Kyoto, only 514 kilometers (320 miles) from Tokyo, costs 30,700 yen ($285) with hotel included. And yet, even that is a bargain -- a round-trip train ticket between the two cities is nearly 26,000 yen ($242).

Other domestic travel fees are also high. Japanese hotel rates, for example, are usually not by room but by person -- and they are high already. Some of the cheapest prices in the "budget" category on a travel homepage for the southern island of Okinawa, a popular resort destination, were around 8,000 yen.

"Travelers are more price conscious now and spending is still quite prudent," said Chihara at the Travel Bureau. "So some people probably do go overseas in preference because of the high costs of travel in Japan."

The result was that domestic travel from April to August fell by 1.9 percent from the previous year, he said.

Yet all is not lost on the home front.

The dip in domestic travel may well be due to factors such as natural disasters, including a volcanic eruption near a resort in the northern island of Hokkaido and the earthquakes that shook a chain of popular islands south of Tokyo -- both occurring just before peak vacation periods.

The July Group of Eight summit of industrialized nations on Okinawa hit travel there -- also in a peak vacation time.

Finally, there is the cheering possibility that the overseas travel boom is actually a leading economic indicator that presages better times at home.

"What's interesting is that people are going overseas not once, but several times," said Dentsu's Ochi. "This means they feel comfortable enough in terms of their daily lives to splurge on foreign trips -- and this will eventually spill over at home.

"Besides, the largest expense of any foreign travel is what you pay up front to the travel agency -- and all of that is spent right here in Japan."

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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