Destination management (or marketing) organizations (DMOs) have a long history, especially in the West. In Japan, however, anecdotal observation suggests that the term DMO was not part of the vocabulary of tourism practitioners or policy makers until the Japanese government adopted the concept in 2015 as a cornerstone of its new tourism policy. Since supporting evidence for this claim is limited, we quantify how the term DMO has proliferated in Japan through a content analysis of major Japanese newspapers, a common approach for studying the diffusion of novel concepts. Empirical results confirmed that the term began commonly appearing in newspaper articles in 2015. Coverage of Japanese DMOs has steadily increased since then, with the term DMO appearing prominently in the headlines quite frequently. The study demonstrates how a Western concept in tourism gains currency in contemporary Japan via the popular press. Future research agendas for this recent phenomena are also discussed.
