観光立国政策の要としての旅行代理店の役割考

―海外旅行アンケート調査および旅行代理店聞取り調査を中心に―

抄録

The government of Japan has officially promoted “the Tourism Nation Promotion Basic Plan” since the Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) was established in 2008 based on the Tourism Nation Promotion Basic Law enacted in January, 2007.
The JTA has tried to promote the project with concerned authorities such as travel agencies in Japan, but the JTA has failed to achieve results with the Tourism Nation Promotion Basic Plan in regard to five fundamentals required for the realization of “Building a Tourism Nation”.
This paper focuses on one of these fundamentals which is the goal to increase the number of Japanese travelers traveling overseas to 20 million by 2010. It also explains the reasons for not achieving this target with reference to the consumer survey and interviews conducted in the tourism industry in Japan.
The finding after the survey is that not only the social issue in the world but also an existence of gap, in a product design between consumer and travel agencies in Japan, causes the less travel consumption by the Japanese. In particular, faced with an environment of disincentive for travel consumption in Japan, the travel agencies appear to merely engage in price wars.