Japan: arline asks passengers to use toilet before boarding

From Oct. 1st All Nippon Airways has started to ask passengers to use the toilet before boarding, to reduce carbon emissions. If only half of the passenger followed the advice, the airline hopes that the weight saved will lead to a five-tonne reduction in carbon emissions over a month.

Source: telegraph.co.uk; find article here>>.

"Travel venture attracts criticism"

The Hankyoreh states that "Lotte JTB, a joint travel venture between retail giant Lotte Group and Japan's largest travel agency, Japan Travel Bureau (JTB), began operations earlier this month, creating a stir in the local tourism industry.
On July 18, The Korea Tourism Association denounced Lotte JTB's advance into the tourism market and submitted a petition to the Presidential office calling for revision of a related law to prevent large companies from entering the tourism industry. Lotte Group is the fifth largest conglomerate by assets in Korea.
According to the petition, 'Lotte JTB’s business goal is to attract 1.2 million South Korean customers to overseas trips in 2011. The figure accounts for a third of the domestic overseas tourism market. In this case, most of the smaller travel agencies will inevitably go bankrupt.'
'The establishment of Lotte JTB is legally flawless, but we are very angry at conglomerates that try to destroy the domestic market by attracting foreign giants,' said the association.
In response, an official of Lotte JTB said, 'When we made our business plan, we aimed at attracting 1.2 million people, however that is just an estimate. JTB first looked for a Korean partner to provide services to Japanese visitors to South Korea'."

"Unified tourism authority planned"

According to The Japan Times Online, "The transport ministry is planning to integrate its tourism-related divisions into a single authority in fiscal 2008 to better attract international visitors and help reinvigorate local areas through tourism, officials said Tuesday.
Under the goal of making tourism a major industry, the government is trying to increase the annual number of foreign tourists to 10 million by 2010, and the planned authority would help spur those efforts, the officials said.
The launch of such an authority has been urged by both Diet chambers in resolutions following the enactment in December of a basic tourism promotion law, as well as by the travel and transport industries.
About 7.33 million foreign tourists visited Japan in 2006, compared with about 17.53 million Japanese tourists going abroad, which the government aims to increase by 2010 to 20 million."

Clampdown on Sex Tourism

The Japanese parliament has approved a new law to prohibit the sexual exploitation of children. It prohibits commercial sexual relations with persons under 18 years of age and prevents Japanese tour operators from organising sex tours abroad. The unanimous vote of the parliament on 18 May addresses the criticism which has been made that Japan was 'soft' on child pornography and sex tourism. The new law means that Japanese law is now in conformity to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

(Originally posted by John Downes)