In the beginning of July European Top of the American maker where we undertook one of an agency visited Japan for approximately one week using the rest before the university admission of his son. As per his request I helped setting up his visiting schedule in Hiroshima and Kyoto to meet his intention in cooperation with our travel agency. I requested the business hotel in Hiroshima and Japanese Inn in Kyoto in order to get them know Japanese culture. We finally reserved Japanese Inn which is not gorgeous but one we, Japanese like to stay at. On the other hand the meal is semi-compulsory with Japanese Inn so that I worried if Japanese meal is palatable to them or not. However, I believe it would help them to understand Japanese culture so I recommended it.
The thing I most worried about was to transfer at the station of the Shinkansen. Surprisingly, I noticed that a ticket of the Shinkansen which I usually use did not have English indication at all. It is not easy for Japanese to transfer at the main Shinkansen station. Therefore, I made a copy of each ticket by the date of travel and translated the content in English with my comments and sent them to him. It is not kind to see no English indication in the Shinkansen Ticket though many foreigners use Shinkansen. They might be at a loss at the station. I sincerely request JR for quick solution for it.
He thanked me for my explanation in English in my memo because of no trouble at transferring the station and was satisfied at Japanese meal of Japanese Inn and the tatami mat room. In Yokohama I guided them to Kamakura Hachiman and Daibutsu in Kamakura. Unfortunately it was rainy but they were full of curiosity and asked me for questions and pressed the shutter of the camera. It was more than my expectation. Meantime, Kamakura was surprisingly crowed with the foreigners in spite of rain. A language of Chinese, Korean and English were heard. Many European, American and Asian visitors were also seen there. I am made to be aware of knowing about Japan a little more from foreign visitors. Therefore, it is necessary for us to recognize our history of Japan and culture more precisely.
Japanese government advocates the target of 20 million foreign visitors (inbound) to Japan toward the Tokyo Olympics of 2020. According to Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) the overall inbound of 2014 in Japan is 13,410,000 people. It rose by 30% from 2013. The 2014 occupancy rate of the main hotel in Kyoto is one point of improvement to 88% from one year ago. Nagoya exceeded until Dec from Sep. 2013 in the same month a year ago consecutively. Sapporo is 83% in 2014 which exceeded 80% of 2013. The number of the foreign hotel guests exceeded 300,000 in 2014 in Wakayama Pre. and increased by 100,000 in comparison with 2013, which recorded high. The number of the total of hotel guests of the foreigner of 2014 increased in 40 metropolis and districts among 47 metropolis and districts of Japan. The guest room unit price rises too. The 2014 tax revenue of the metropolis, districts, cities, towns and villages increase to 38.4 trillion yen which was 1.7 trillion yen more than one in 2013. It increased in the 5 consecutive years. It was contributed by the 30% increase of inbound to Japan.
Expenditure of the inbound of the first quarter of 2015 was 2.3 trillion yen which pushed up 0.1% of GDP. The occupancy rate of the business hotel of Tokyo was 85.5% during the 1st quarter of 2015. Nagoya exceeded for 8 consecutive months in the operating ratio and achieved 88% in April. The foreign ratio was 36%, which increases by 5 points from the year earlier.
The amount of total handling by China UnionPay(Ginren card) was 360 billion yen in the first half of 2015 in Japan, which was 3 times a year earlier and exceeded 280 billion yen of 2014. It is the key how to induce the inbound from China, Korea and Asia to attain the target of 20 million. It is necessary to appeal that charm of Japan consists in the local districts, not Tokyo. Weak yen provokes the overseas investors into more investment on the real estate of Japan like buying a condominium and the purchase of the office building. It is necessary to get the overseas investors towards a district of Japan.
On July 9, IMF reduced the world economic growth rate of 2015 in 3.3% from 3.5% of April. USA is reduced to 2.5% from 3.1% and Japan from 1.0% to 0.8%. On the other hand Euro zone is unchanged as 1.5% and China as 6.8%. According to British marine transportation consulting firm, Drewry the achievements in this year of the whole containership industry expected the black of 8 billion dollars at the beginning of the year. But they revised their forecast that the income and expenditure of the shipping lines would be gainless or some in red figure. It is because the speed of the mean global freight rate drops faster and the freight rate of 4 main routs is to anticipate 32% of falls compared with the previous year. There are construction ordering of the mega containerships more than 10,000 TEU in the background of 93 + 10 option of which 49 + 10 options are 20,000 TEU mega containerships. 10~15 mega containerships will be introduced quarterly in Asia/European route. The existing containerships will be automatically moved to the next big route of the scale. A big ship pushes out an existing ship regardless of the actual cargo demand and it is fraught with the risk to fall into useless freight rate competition to fill the space of the big ship.
This applies to the present Chinese container maker. The new container price falls to $1,650 per 20f. The new container stock in China factories is still beyond 1 million TEU at present. It is thought that the container makers sell cheap in order to fill the production space of their factories with priority. Shipping lines and leasing companies would not buy containers even if the factories lower their price. The leasing companies would forecast the future demand. They will take a wait and see attitude if there will be the actual demand while the price is getting lower. They have learned from past bitter experience. First of all, they misled the future demand and they thought they had a good bargain of containers at the rock bottom price. However, there arose no big demand more than one year so that they had a painful experience of having kept them idle in the factories for almost one year. After all they had to lease them with some incentives as the new-old containers in the market. It becomes the expensive purchase if you jump at it because it is merely cheap. However, the container factory makers have own reason. They could not easily lay off workers and could not lower the operation ratio of the factory. The security of the high quality worker comes to be difficult at the time when they reopen the factory. Besides maintenance of the container quality is difficult. They might think that it is wise in the long view for them to survive by bargaining under hard competition in order to maintain container quality if it does not continue long.
The competition is necessary but too much is dangerous. We should come through simple price competition and play with added value. We would like to share the problem of our customers and we would like to aim at the company which could give our customers the best solution.