5:15 PM - 6:30 PM
[HTT14-P07] Mapping Inbound Package Tours Visiting Countryside of Japan -- A Case of Toyama Prefecture
Keywords:inbound tourism, countryside, network analysis
Japan has seen a marked increase in inbound tourists since the start of the 2000s. However, foreign tourists are travelling unevenly across the country. Previous studies have made great effort to investigate the spatial travel pattern of foreign tourists, but detailed picture of countryside visitation has not been clarified enough. Moreover, inbound tourism in Japan heavily relies on two markets, Taiwan and mainland China accounted for half of the foreign arrivals. This case study aims to understand the spatial structure of inbound tours visiting the countryside of Japan from Taiwan and mainland China.
Toyama prefecture, a case of a countryside area which has the second-highest percentage of tourists visiting by package tours (according to Japan Tourism Agency “International Visitor Survey 2019”). In this study, City/village scale tour destination maps were visualized, which were generated from Taiwan (389) and Mainland China (258) package tours collected by web crawler in 2019. Each destination posted in tours was represented by nodes, the movement flow was represented by links, and the tour networks were analyzed by multiple network analysis methods.
The result can be summarized in two points: 1) The range of destinations posted in Taiwanese tours was as wide as 80 places, besides the number in mainland tours was 44 places. Especially numerous small countryside cities were contained in Taiwanese tours. But centrality indicators showed that some key infrastructure nodes were common, such as Kanazawa and Shirakawa occupied a central position both to Taiwan and mainland China. 2) Different patterns were also found in the touring routes detected by modularity-based classification. The most outstanding difference appeared to be the presence/absence of Tokyo-Osaka route, suggesting Taiwanese tours preferred countryside while mainland tours were orientated toward the metropolis even in the countryside visitation. This empirical study explored inbound tour networks by multiple methods and provided a detailed picture in ways of visiting the countryside of Japan. The result is meaningful to future tourism promotion.
Toyama prefecture, a case of a countryside area which has the second-highest percentage of tourists visiting by package tours (according to Japan Tourism Agency “International Visitor Survey 2019”). In this study, City/village scale tour destination maps were visualized, which were generated from Taiwan (389) and Mainland China (258) package tours collected by web crawler in 2019. Each destination posted in tours was represented by nodes, the movement flow was represented by links, and the tour networks were analyzed by multiple network analysis methods.
The result can be summarized in two points: 1) The range of destinations posted in Taiwanese tours was as wide as 80 places, besides the number in mainland tours was 44 places. Especially numerous small countryside cities were contained in Taiwanese tours. But centrality indicators showed that some key infrastructure nodes were common, such as Kanazawa and Shirakawa occupied a central position both to Taiwan and mainland China. 2) Different patterns were also found in the touring routes detected by modularity-based classification. The most outstanding difference appeared to be the presence/absence of Tokyo-Osaka route, suggesting Taiwanese tours preferred countryside while mainland tours were orientated toward the metropolis even in the countryside visitation. This empirical study explored inbound tour networks by multiple methods and provided a detailed picture in ways of visiting the countryside of Japan. The result is meaningful to future tourism promotion.