Japan is the largest supplier of visitors to the Pacific - about 4 million in 2006. Most visit North Pacific islands, but even Australia and New Zealand welcome 800,000 Japanese per annum. But South Pacific Islands receive only 2% of Japanese visitors to the Pacific so there is opportunity for further development.

Japanese outbound travel has been soft in recent years, but there are signs that a prolonged economic recession may be over. Therefore south-pacific.travel is organizing the first ever "Japan Starter Pack".

During April 16-20, south-pacific.travel will lead a small delegation of organizations attempting to penetrate the Japanese travel market on a focused series of 20 meetings in Tokyo and Osaka.

Chief Executive Tony Everitt said "the internet is doing amazing things to travel distribution. It has allowed a whole new tier of specialist travel agents to emerge that didn't even exist a decade ago in Japan. We will focus on visiting these specialists as they are very interested in developing the emerging South Pacific destinations. The specialists are small and so are we-it's a good fit."

Accompanying south-pacific.travel are members Teta Tours of Tonga, and Dojin Tours of Christmas Island. Everitt said "the advantage of a small, tight group is that we can move fast around crowded Tokyo streets and fit comfortably into the very small offices of the specialist distributors. Because we are not putting on a big flashy show the cost is minimal." The visit is being supported by Air Pacific and Air New Zealand. south-pacific.travel is timing the visit to coincide with the launch of its Japanese language web portal.

"We are the official destination portal for the South Pacific so search engines like Google give us good ranking." noted Everitt. The internet has become the single largest source of travel bookings in Japan, accounting for 35% of all bookings in 2005 according to Japan Travel Bureau. However for South Pacific Islands specifically, package tours (69%) overwhelmingly dominated individually arranged travel (6%). Everitt said "making more information on the South Pacific available online in Japanese will help attract more independent visitors." south-pacific.travel, 12/04/07.