I have received permission from my clients to write this report.
Clients of mine from Vienna visited Japan before the Corona pandemic and they recently wanted to return to Japan.
They liked my small travel agency and asked me to organize their trip again. I was incredibly happy about that!
I spoke to them regularly about ZOOM.
It was necessary to check their schedule in Japan and then find an efficient itinerary, matching it with the Japanese calendar.
They wanted to avoid the crowds in the fall as much as possible because there are many holidays in Japan and it is also a travel time for Japanese people.
We also had to consider how heavy it would be to carry their suitcases.
However, there is a courier service in Japan.
With this service, you can send your heavy suitcase to the next hotel but one and travel to the next hotel with a small backpack containing your luggage for a few nights.
Not all hotels work with this courier service.
It was therefore necessary to check with each hotel to make sure this was the case.
The location of the hotel is also important. The accessibility of airports and train stations should also be taken into account.
We carefully considered which hotel we should stay in.
Many travelers these days use OTAs (Online Travel Agents) to book hotels. I don’t deny that it’s convenient. But it’s also true that there are problems with it. I’ve had the opportunity to speak with hotel managers and I’m not sure if it’s a problem with the OTA system or if it’s a mistake on the traveler’s part when booking, but sometimes they arrive at the hotel without a reservation or they’ve booked with the wrong details. Hotel managers want to help these travelers, but since their bookings were made through OTAs, they have to file a complaint with the OTAs themselves.
My clients, however, do not encounter any such booking errors. My small travel agency is a recognized Japanese travel agency and a member of the All Nippon Travel Agents Association (ANTA). Their unions have close ties with the Japanese government and are trusted by the hotels. I use this network to contact each hotel.
The most important thing, of course, is that I do what my customers want. Nikko and Hakone are very crowded in the fall, so a schedule of not spending the weekend there was suggested to make it as convenient as possible.
Fortunately, my clients trusted my small travel agency and were open to my suggestions. It involved visiting the Japanese countryside, as well as destinations that are popular with foreign tourists.
They then stayed at a ryokan in Togari-Onsen, Nagano Prefecture, and at Zenkoji Temple in Nagano, where they stayed in a temple hostel. In Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture, they stayed in a family-run guesthouse overlooking the sea.
I am very glad that they liked it there.
In Japan, a lot of information is only available in Japanese. Some information is also only available from Japanese travel agencies.
In some famous destinations, there are only foreign tourists and few Japanese people. If you prefer this way of traveling, of course I have no objection, but my clients had other wishes.
I will continue this report in my next blog.
*The nice photos were taken by the customer.
