Most popular Tourist Attractions
of Japan
coming soon
History of the website
and Tourism Marketing
in Japan
Visit Japan.com
Domain registration date: 04-04-1998
The domain was registered during
the early years of the internet,
eventually before JNTO
had the idea to make a website
Japan.travel
Domain registration date: 10-07-2006
Visit Japan.jp
Domain registration date: 26-01-2016
it is possible that JNTO
forgot to renew in 2023
Domain now hold by Onamae,
a japanese domain company.
JapanWelcomesYou.com
new Domain registration date: 01-11-2022
Timeline
1964 Foundation of JNTO
coinciding with the preparation
of the Tokyo Olympics
with the mission to promote tourism
and develop international exchanges
1967 first JNTO overseas office
opened in New York
1980s Opening of
International
Sales offices
1985 Expo 85 in Tsukuba
1998 Registration of the domain
VisitJapan.com
04-04-1998
VisitJapan.com owned
by DongChang.org
2000 The Gov of Japan
makes tourism
a strategic economic pilar
2002 VisitJapan.com
becomes a tiny
commercia site
2003 Launch of the "Visit Japan Campaign"
and the site Visit Japan.jp
2005 extension .travel created
with the idea to make an alternative
to the established .com TLD
mainly for website in the Tourist industry.
In the following years
hundreds of other new sTLD
are launched
creating major competition
among new niche TLDs
While .com is recognised all over the world
and ccTlds
like .jp are know
in and beyond
their respective countries (Japan)
sTLDs
also called sponsored TLDs
are much less popular.
There are only 18.000 active .travel domains,
less than 0.01% of all active websites
In recent years a new trend
can be observed
of countries or cities making a strategic shift
away from .travel to .com,
mainly
"visitX.com"
prioritizing user familiarity,
SEO benefits,
and broader marketing effectiveness.
2009 VisitJapan.com offline
2015 VisitJapan.com
domain
reactivated
without serious content
2015 redesign of the site Japan.travel
2018 The popular site
VisitJapan.jp
stops working
eventually due to a domain renewal issue
domain aquired by a Japansese
domain company Onamae
2020 Visit Japan.com
offline again
2020 World affected by Corona
2021 VisitJapan.com
listed for sale
sales page sponsored by a
out of topic video
2022 Repoening to International Tourists
in october afer 2 and a half years
of restrictions due to Corona
The Japan Tourist board has the
problem that many Tourists
don't remember
the URL
japan.travel
... insteat they go to
Japan.com,
a commercial website
powered by Pear Media
or Japan.jp,
a non working site.
JNTO has offices in 20 countries
Offers from Expedia
Visit Domains
and Tourist Boards
in neighbouring countries
Japan is an archipelago
it has
no borders with other
It obly has maritime borders with
4 countries
Check out other Tourist Information
Visit Russia.com
Visit China.com
Visit South Korea.com
Visit Taiwan.com