Tourism In Kansai: Destinations, Systems, And Impact On The Economy

Kansai Destinations of Interest to Tourists

Write about the Report of Tourism in Kansai for Kumano Trail.

This report will outline the impact of tourism in Kansai a city in Japan. It will also discuss the systems and destinations in Kansai which tourist are interested in. These features include markets, food, spiritual walks, culinary tourism. It will also discuss the number of tourists who visit Kansai and the means they use to arrive and depart from the city. There also suggested itineraries for those who visit Kansai. This includes visiting the heritage sites of the Kumano Pilgrimage Trail, tracking on the bridge formed by gods, going to the three unique Kansai cites which include Osaka and Nara (Dekle 1996, pg. 56). Also visiting the places with the Yoshino cherry trees in Nara and Tokyo (Clancy, J., 2013).

This report will also discuss visiting of religious places such as shrines, temples and old homes, visiting the appeal of Kobe where the east and west cultures meet. Visiting the Hilltop Buddhist Cities at Mt. Koya-san and the Sacred World heritage. There also gourmet adventure through Mie a town in Japan. It will also discuss the Kansai prefectures which are found in Mie, Hyogo, Nara, Shiga, Kyoto, and Wakayama. In markets, it will highlight the impact of tourism on investment and how market prices are affected by tourism.

The report will also have analyzed statistical data of the internal and foreign visitors in Kansai city. Traditional tourism like visiting the hot springs will not be left out in this report (Seaton and Yamamura, 2015 pg. 5). The sector of foods also will be discussed, for example, the production of noodles and how consuming of foodstuffs by tourists affect agriculture in the entire country. Religious foods will also be discussed in details. Spiritual or walking tourism will also be outlined in this report and how it is conducted in Kansai. Pictorial information on the destination and the effects it has on tourist will also be discussed in this report. Systems which support tourism in Kansai will be listed and their effects too will be noted. The advantages of having tourists in Kansai will be outlined and the disadvantages the same will be discussed. The other issue in this report is how landscape or demographic changes affect tourism in Kansai. Domestic one direction trip which is known as the Gourmet trip will be a matter of discussion in this writing. This paper will also discuss why Kansai is becoming a flower of Japan. The relation between the locals and tourists will be highlighted and the effect the tourists have on the local communities in the places they visit. Tables and charts will be used to analyze data and some few methodologies used to draw a conclusion. 

Systems That Support Tourism in Kansai

Research shows that the number of tourists who visited Japan in the year 2015 was approximately 2.95 (Tseng & Huan, 2017 p. 184) and around 40% of this number visited Kansai which amounted to 73.34 thousand visitors. This is a great promotion to the sector of tourism in Japan. This number has been rising up since 2017 up to date, this is because several systems have been built to deal with the quality of services given to tourists in Kansai (Padhil and Purnomo, 2018). The table below shows the data of visits since the year 2015.

year	Number of tourists in millions	Increment in %
2015	2.95	original
2016	3.12	5
2017	3.74	20
2018	Data not analyzed	pending

Although a large number of people amounting to approximately 24 million between 2015 and 2016 there were few who were interested in tourist attractions. This large of tourists also left Japan by the means of air transport from several airports in Japan. It is a spiritual experience to visit Kansai because of several tourist destinations. These include scenic rivers, breathtaking rocky costs, temples and shrines, centennial forests and majestic waterfalls. Those with short visits always leave this area unsatisfied because all striking adjectives in the world can be found in Kansai. The destinations are well grouped to make it easier for travelers to visit them. Nara park in one of the destination, in this area more than 1200 wild beer wonder everywhere freely without restriction (Chujo and Oghigian, 2006 p. 135). Some special crackers are sold to the visitors to feed these beers.

The other destination found in Kansai is Arashiyama which is found in the outskirts of Tokyo. While ending to Arashimaya you pass through the Hozu river and the Togetsukyo bridge where people go to have a leisure walk. The mountain starts just after the bridge and it welcomes you with you with a monkey park and beautiful few of the plant (EIJIOHT, 2012 p. 28). Arashimaya also bost of the Bamboo Grove.

The other place to visit in Kansai is the Hashigui Iwa where are pointing rocks spreading for about a kilometer giving a view of a bridge, this place is used by tourists to catch sunrise because the sun rises from behind the rocks (WADA and MINAMIGAWA, 2013 p. 87). The temple of Kiyomizudera is another interesting place for tourists, the design which was used to build this temple is a funny approach because no nails were used (Keiji 1979, pp.388). The long shopping street and the forest around it also attracts the tourists.

Statistical Data on Tourists Visiting Kansai

The shrine of Fujimi Inari is famous because of the tori gate marks which lead to the main building. These gates have the names of those who donated them, and they are surrounded by a forest that keep thoughts flowing in mind (Turnbull and Stephen, 2015). The other shrine which is a tourist destination is the shrine of Nachi Taicha which is along the routes of Kii mountains in Japan. Against the shrine is 133 meters’ waterfall which leaves one speechless.

Returning tourist in Kansai uses the Kansai airport to leave the country. Here the charges of leaving are very high. Around the airport are markets of traditional baskets, shoes, and foods. The airport provides a market to the traders around it because these tourist roams in the market when waiting for departure.

Stakeholders and their roles

Stakeholder

Contribution to the sector of tourism in Kansai

Suppliers

Suppliers serve the surrounding shops and market with goods which they require to do their business They provide agricultural produce for manufacturing foodstuffs such as noodles. They also supply to the tourists direct by selling to them the goods and services. Their effort helps much because all needs of the visitors are dealt with and in the right manner. Everything in the area depends on suppliers because if they will fail to provide them the other plants which depend on them will fail too and the sector of tourism will not improve in any way.

A stakeholder is that person who is concerned in business, stakeholders also can be defined as a party with interest in a company or organization and can either affect the company or be affected by the company. They include creditors, employees, directors, suppliers, unions, shareholders and the surrounding community (Barnett, 2018). The main two stakeholders in this area are suppliers and directors. The table below shows the contribution they have towards the sector of tourism in this area. 

Directors

These are people who offer direction help to the visitors in the area of Kansai, they may be individual or companies. Directors help visitors not to get stranded when they arrive at Kansai in Japan. They also offer transport to those who don’t have their vehicles. The direct the tourist to the areas where they can get hotels and the destinations in Kansai. This helps out because the visitors will not waste time roaming looking for a place or using mobile application for direction which is hard when you are in a new place.

Market segmentation is a process of dividing a large market into small parts in which these small parts have common needs, wants and get similar demands from customers. The objective is to create a market which will offer the expected services to the customer in a quality and easy way without straining. This segmentation can also be done in a company in order to concentrate in areas which they are perfect at. Their four main strategies which are considered. They include behavioral, demographic, geographical issues and psychographic issues (Liu & Liao, 2018). Market segmentation is important to this destination because it makes it easy for tourists to do shopping, it easy to specialize in one commodity when the market is well segmented. Those people are good in a certain field will give a nice service to the visitors and this will keep them coming. The segmentation bases used in Kansai is behavioral, demographic and geographical. Most of these bases are used because the destinations in Kansai are more of natural attractions. These include mountain and forests.

Target markets can be defined as those people who are most likely to purchase good from a certain market (Wilhelm, 2015). The people mostly targeted by the segmented market are the tourists and the people in the area of the segment because the segments are based on behaviors which include culture. So any business started should aim to sell to the visitors and the surrounding locals.

Stakeholders Involved in Kansai Tourism

Experiences is that knowledge of doing different things in the perfect way because one has been doing them for a long time. People of Kansai have two experiences; first, they have experience in food preparation. They use agricultural products to make noodles which are highly consumed by the visitors. This improves the agricultural sector because the market is available for their products and at good prices. They also prepare religious food especially the Buddhist prepare food from the shrine and people eat from there. The Kansai people have the experience in making traditional baskets and also in decorating houses and fields. This gives a beautiful look at the fields where tourist visit daily.

These two experiences are strategically important to the destinations of Kansai because they attract the visitor who leads to the improvement of Kansai’s economic sector. If the people of Kansai had no enough experience in these two areas, then it would be hard for the tourists to come in their area. In each area of business, experience is needed in order to give quality service to the customers, this means that also the amount of money paid will increase leading to the development of roads and other structure in the area of Kansai.

Experience always have a positive effect on the society because everyone earns enough money from their experience and this promotes their standards of living from low to high. There are many people in all segments of Kansai who offer services to the tourists going to this area.

Experiences	Location in the destination region	Types of experiences (natural, cultural, urban)
Food preparation	Tokyo	Urban and cultural
Decorating	·         Osaka and Minami areas	Cultural

The number of tourists visiting this area increases in big percentage yearly. The World Travel and Tourism Council said that Kansai contributed to Japan economic development. Kansai possesses the potential to be a unique tourist destination. Local people come up with their products and after earning money they can improve their standards of living (Okamoto, 2015 p. 15). Personal development by the building of shops, restaurants, carving shades and motels give a lot of capital to private investors in Kansai.

The sector of transport has also developed, the roads reaching the tourist attraction sceneries have been constructed well and this has made transportation in the city of Kansai and the whole of Japan. Those companies which offer tourism services also offer employment to local people to improve their level of living. More than 30% of Kansai population get employed by the tourism sector. There are also challenges Kansai as a destination for tourists. These include

• A high population of visitors such that tickets have to be booked two months earlier, this discourages the tourists from visiting some tourist attraction area like the Ghibli Museum (Dongyang and Hayashi, 2015 p. 40).
• The government of Kansai is not the best unit in the market of tourism so failure to employ private sectors in the field make the sector unsuccessful.
• The problem of balancing the gender in all association meeting in Kansai is another problem. Ladies should be consulted because half of the population of the tourists are women (Shinohara, 2018 p. 68).
• The present market in Kansai is not digitalized hence the tourism sector had been digital since 10 years ago. They should include things such as TripAdvisor and other digital equipment for the sector of tourism (Ndou, 2011).

Market Segmentation and Target Markets in Kansai

Introduction of digital equipment in the tourism sector, for easy movement Kansai government should introduce applications such as TripAdvisor direction givers and it should also introduce digital payment method to make it easy for the foreigners to pay for services. The digital applications or system for the guide will offer good service and they will be easy to use and they will burn the problem of language barrier. Introducing digital services will save time for the visitors and the tourism companies too. Digital booking of tickets may make it easy for those areas with a large number of visits because people don’t need to travel in advance to book for tickets. Paying for goods in the market with a digital way of payment will be than going to change the money from banks which are so tedious.

The other recommendation is the resident recommendation, this will help to get good tour guides and people with experience of how people live in the segment in hand. This creates employment to the local leading to improvement of their standards of living (Takahashi and Sasaki, 2017 p. 325). Involving the local will encourage them to learn a new language which is an achievement to them and to the tourism sector. Introducing the local is a way of appreciating what belongs to them and this will make them see the sector of tourism as a plan to help them earn living.

Locals always have a lot of knowledge on the destination of tourist in Kansai so if they are used, it will be easy to offer services through government and private tourism companies.

The table below represents the summary of these recommendations:

Recommendation as to how a plan can be enhanced	Justification
Digitalization	Easy movement Easy payment Easy booking of tickets
Involvement of residents	Offer employment Knowledge about the destinations Quality service offering Always available

Conclusion

In conclusion, Kansai is the destination where every visitor will enjoy being there. The food types which include noodles and shrine food are delicious and this is a good reason for tourists to visit all destinations in the city of Kansai. Spiritual walks and walking on the bridges built by the gods is another interesting thing which encourages visitors to come to the city of Kansai. All the scenes in Kansai are among the best tourist attractions in Japan, and they give the best tourist services compared to the other parts of the country. The number of visitors per year increases and this shows a positive improvement in the area of tourism.

The only problem facing the sector of tourism in Kansai is on booking of tickets because many tourists need to visit these destinations. The problem of digitalization is also facing Kansai and the entire country of Japan, this problem should be dealt with to make purchasing and payment of services easier. Introduction of a digital system will help in advertising and giving simple instruction to those people arriving in Kansai. Involving private sectors to better the services given to tourists. The government should employ private companies to take care of tourists arriving in Kansai.

Experiences of the Kansai People

Also developing digital transport means as electric trains connecting these destinations. This will improve transport among the locals and the tourism part. Also integration with other

Countries will make it affordable and easy to visit the Kansai town and other parts of Japan because there is freedom of movement. The residents used should be educated and should be good people who cannot kidnap visitors. Security should be another sector to improve on because if security is not there no tourists will come to either Japan or to its cities such as Kansai.

References

Dekle, R., 1996. Saving-investment associations and capital mobility on the evidence from Japanese regional data. Journal of International Economics, 41(1-2), pp.53-72.

Seaton, P. and Yamamura, T., 2015, January. Japanese popular culture and contents tourism–Introduction. In Japan forum (Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 1-11). Routledge.

Padhil, A. and Purnomo, H., 2018. Macroergonomic approaches as a solution to local wisdom-based tourist village development planning. In MATEC Web of Conferences (Vol. 154, p. 01080). EDP Sciences.

Tseng, Y.L., Sato, N., Yeh, S.S. and Huan, T.C., 2017. 16 Tourism in Preserved Nature Areas in Taiwan. Nature Tourism, p.184.

Liu, J., Liao, X., Huang, W. and Liao, X., 2018. Market segmentation: A multiple criteria approach combining preference analysis and segmentation decision. Omega.

Li, S., Takahashi, S., Yamada, K., Takagi, M. and Sasaki, J., 2017, December. Analysis of SNS photo data taken by foreign tourists to Japan and a proposed adaptive tourism recommendation system. In Progress in Informatics and Computing (PIC), 2017 International Conference on (pp. 323-327). IEEE.

Barnett, M.L., 2018. Influence Stakeholders, Influence the World.

Okamoto, T., 2015, January. Otaku tourism and the anime pilgrimage phenomenon in Japan. In Japan forum (Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 12-36). Routledge.

Shinohara, Y., 2018. Tourism Strategy towards 2020: Promotion of Tourism and the Revitalization of Regional Areas. In Economic Challenges Facing Japan’s Regional Areas (pp. 67-73). Palgrave Pivot, Singapore.

Wilhelm, A., 2015. Market segmentation of diabetes type 1 patients as potential consumers of the Artificial Pancrease (Bachelor’s thesis, University of Twente).

Dongyang, Z., Mori, T. and Hayashi, K., 2015. A Study on Preferences and Behavioral Patterns of Chinese Tourists in Kansai Region, Japan. Konan Economic Papers, 55(1?2), pp.31-46.

Chujo, K., Utiyama, M. and Oghigian, K., 2006. Selecting level-specific Kyoto tourism vocabulary using statistical measures. New aspects of English language teaching and learning, pp.126-138.

EIJIOHT, A., 2012. 2 In search of the phantom monkeys. The Monkeys of Stormy Mountain: 60 Years of Primatological Research on the Japanese Macaques of Arashiyama, 61, p.28.

Clancy, J., 2013. Kyoto City of Zen: Visiting the Heritage Sites of Japan’s Ancient Capital. Tuttle Publishing.

Keiji, N., 1979. The Medieval Origins of the Eta-Hinin. Journal of Japanese Studies, 5(2), pp.385-403.

WADA, Y. and MINAMIGAWA, M., 2013. Flow Structures Exposed on the Contact Zone of the Hashigui-iwa Dike in Wakayama Prefecture, SW Japan. In Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of Japan The 120th Annual Meeting (2013’Sendai) (p. 087). The Geological Society of Japan.

Ndou, V., 2011. New approaches for managing tourism complexity: Implications and insights. In Digital culture and e-tourism: Technologies, applications and management approaches (pp. 123-138). IGI Global.

Turnbull, Stephen. Japan’s Sexual Gods: Shrines, Roles and Rituals of Procreation and Protection. Brill, 2015.