Mission accomplished for Japan’s Travel Volunteers?

As we reported back in November, the Travel Volunteer Project, which reached the finish line just over two weeks ago at the end of 2011, was one of the more ambitious and far-ranging PR-driven travel schemes we’ve yet come across.

The brainchild of a travel agency in Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture, the Project recruited two Britons who had never before set foot in Japan to travel the country’s 47 prefectures in 100 days, posting daily blogs from the road.

Its goal? To tell the world that Japan is as safe and fascinating as it ever was, regardless of the awful events of March 11 last year.

Of the 1,897 applicants from 85 different countries, photographer Katy Morrison and writer Jamie Lafferty were chosen to undertake the mission.

The couple embarked on their journey on September 15 from Kanazawa Station, returning there to complete the circuit on December 23, just two days before Christmas.

Magellan Resorts & Trust and its Real Japan-branded travel agency in Kanazawa was behind the road trip of a lifetime.

The company began offering domestic tours for overseas customers (“inbound tours”) five years ago. Just when its inbound operations finally stabilized last year, March 11 saw one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded hit the northeast of Japan.

News channels showered the world with continuous footage of the tsunami generated by the Great East Japan Earthquake and reports on the Fukushima nuclear accident. Many believed all of Japan to be in a state of disaster and foreign tourists essentially stopped coming.

When his staff suggested the Travel Volunteer Project, Magellan president Hiroshi Kuchiki didn’t take long to approve it. “I felt we needed to do something bold like this to draw people’s attention,” he tells us. “Otherwise, nothing would change.”

Once word of the Project got out, far more people applied than expected.

Aya Kihara, supervisor of inbound operations, explains: “We didn’t know what the response would be. We were surprised by the number of people who applied and reassured that Japan had not been abandoned as a tourist destination.”

After a rigorous selection process, the two winners were announced in September 2011 and the journey began — including the unenviable task of getting the logistics in place.

Seeking support

“When we launched this scheme, we went to the Japan Tourism Agency for some support, but they had no interest or even saw the point of the Project and rejected it,” says Kihara.

“Then we went to METI — Japan’s trade and economy ministry — which at least thanked us for taking such an initiative to bring tourism back.

“They supported the Project (unfortunately not financially), so it at least that helped us talk to potential sponsors.”

In other words, the Project was tough going from the very beginning, before the first blog post, tweet or press story aiming to remind the world what an alluring tourist destination Japan remains.

“Of course, some places helped us the very day we opened our site and interpreter supporters also gave us their individual assistance, but it’s hard to put into words how we felt about the difference in the degrees of support people showed,” says Kihara.

Yet, the situation had changed for the better by the end of the marathon trip.