NTT Communications (NTT Com) is conducting a demonstration experiment of tourism marketing using data in Hiroshima Prefecture in collaboration with the Hiroshima Tourism Federation (HIT), Waseda University, Intage, and Dentsu Institute of Human Studies.
As a result of grasping the trends of inbound tourists, the effectiveness of using data to plan policies for attracting visitors and promoting consumption was confirmed, so from June, efforts will be launched targeting domestic tourists.
By grasping the trends of inbound tourists, for example, it was found that many tourists come to Hiroshima from Italy and Spain.
HIT Chief Producer Shotaro Yamabe said, “This was a surprise. Hiroshima has decided on priority countries, but Spain and Italy were not on our radar. This is because according to the data on the number of overnight stays, Italy and Spain are not that large. Italians and Spanish people are coming to Hiroshima, but they are not staying overnight. If that’s the case, we just need to think of a strategy to get them to stay overnight. This was a new discovery.”
Professor Onzo Naoto of the Waseda University School of Commerce also said, “By using people flow data, we can know exactly where people are and what routes they took. If we can match this well with tourism, we can further advance tourism research in Japan.”
However, he recognizes that Japan tends to lag behind in marketing using data.
Yamabe says, “Right now we still place importance on the continuity of past data such as surveys, so even when new, correct data starts to come out, there is a tendency not to adopt it. With tourism, we can now accurately grasp the number of overnight stays and movement information, so if this becomes dramatically widespread, I think there will be various benefits not only in Hiroshima but all over Japan.”
Tokuda Yasuyuki, head of NTT Com’s Marketing Integration Promotion Office, said, “We would like to make the Hiroshima model a best practice and expand it to other local governments”.

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