The VISIT JAPAN Travel & MICE Mart 2024 is a three-day international business conference which was held from 26th-28th September.
This year, Heartland Japan participated with the local community from the Kiso and Ina areas in product development and providing business support. The purpose of this conference was to allow an opportunity for local business and residents to participate in B2B business negotiations in a warm and friendly atmosphere, which everyone greatly enjoyed.
I am pleased that we were able to achieve one of our goals working towards an increase in rural regional, community-based tourism.
We would like to thank all of the residents who participated, the interpreters who facilitated the session well within the limited 20 minutes, and the DMO staff.
In addition, many people from all over Japan who we have collaborated with for a long time came to the Tourism EXPO, which was held at the same time. Because of this, I didn’t have many opportunities to leave my post due to the huge success, but the strange feeling of meeting people in Tokyo whom I usually meet on business trips around Japan was one of the best parts of this event.
Through the people I met, I heard about the latest developments in the rural regions of Japan, where progress is slowly but surely coming to fruition. We held strategy meetings to discuss taking more actions and enacting even more interesting things in the coming year, whilst listening to their thoughts, ideas, and advice about what else they want to do during the rest of this year. I was delighted to have the opportunity to talk face-to-face with everyone.
Through our participation in this event, we were not only able to exchange a lot of information, but I also have a feeling that tourism and business around Japan are going to continue to develop in a big and very interesting way, so let’s do our best together!