New Yokoso! Database Plan

[Mulboyne]

[floatl][/floatl]Bernama: Japan To Build Database To Boost Foreign Tourists
Japan will establish a database of foreigners interested in the country in fiscal 2009 started last month in an effort to promote tourism, Japan's Jiji Press reported Thursday. The Japan Tourism Agency hopes that the database will cover more than two million such foreigners, officials said. The agency plans to gather information through questionnaires offered with lotteries on a special Web site, while providing tailored information to registered foreigners via e-mail. The agency will promote the programme through print ads in 12-targeted economies, including Britain, China, South Korea, Thailand and the United States. The agency will allow private-sector companies such as hotel operators to use the database for marketing activity. The moves comes as the number of foreign tourists to Japan fell some 30 pct year over year each in January and February, hurt by the global economic slowdown.

As a tourist, nothing could make you happier than to hear that a country wants to put your details in a centralized government database.

[Cyka UchuuJin]

i'm with you, mulboyne. they already fingerprint and photograph you and take photocopies of your passport in hotels.

and not just that, but who'd want to go to a country that spams them to come visit?

[Greji]

i'm with you, mulboyne. they already fingerprint and photograph you and take photocopies of your passport in hotels.

and not just that, but who'd want to go to a country that spams them to come visit?

I see you haven't been talking to Take lately....

[Doctor Stop]

As a tourist, nothing could make you happier than to hear that a country wants to put your details in a centralized government database.

And not just any country, we're talking about a country where all corporate customer and government databases inadvertently end up distributed around the world via Winny.

[Cyka UchuuJin]

I see you haven't been talking to Take lately....

i never talk to Take. am i missing something here?

[Behan]

Sounds pretty fishy to me. Isn't it just a plot to get information on FGs here?

[GuyJean]

.. The agency will allow private-sector companies such as hotel operators to use the database for marketing activity...

Do I get a cut? They're my goods they're selling..

GJ

[Tsuru]

What the hell is the point of a marketing system designed to generate interest in people who are already interested?

[wuchan]

What the hell is the point of a marketing system designed to generate interest in people who are already interested?

It's a reason to pay more j-gov types to do nothing.

[SIZE="1"]or they are setting up files on all of us[/SIZE]

[Kuang_Grade]

What the hell is the point of a marketing system designed to generate interest in people who are already interested?

In marketing speak, this would be viewed as a low level 'conversion' tool, that is to say, something that takes existing consumer interest and adds some additional effort/info/promo pricing that hopefully prompts the consumer to convert that interest into an actual purchase.

I would imagine that it is more for businesses and regional tourism boards to be able to contact potential customers as well as simply another (and cheaper) marketing channel for JNTO. As it is, I think JNTO (at least in the the US) wasn't doing much beyond answering queries/sending out pamphlets as well as occasionally running super expensive and completely ineffective print ad campaigns. As it is now, a standard ad campaign to promote, say, Hokkaido to US tourists would be too expensive and too limited to draw interest but an email blast of some cheap JTB tour packages or ANA flight packages with some hotel deals would cost next to nothing and would only go to an audience that would likely have at least some possibility of knowing where Hokkaido is.