Japan called an untapped market for LV resorts

Monday, July 27, 1998 | 9:43 a.m.

A company that assists visitors from Japan with convention and translation services believes more than twice as many Japanese are visiting Las Vegas than the U.S. Commerce Department is counting.

Ken Tomono, managing editor of Yokoso, a monthly newsletter distributed by Japan Convention and Translation Services in Las Vegas, said up until this year when a recession cut into the number of Japanese travelers, there were more than 900,000 Japanese a year visiting Southern Nevada.

The Commerce Department, whose statistics are used by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to develop target marketing, said 403,000 Japanese visited Las Vegas in 1997.

"I've been chasing this for 10 years," said Tomono, whose newsletter is distributed to about 300 clients and is the basis of a World Wide Web site that started operations last month. The company also distributes the Japanese-language CITYGUIDE USA magazine with 30,000 copies to more than 260 locations in North America and Japan.

Tomono blames the low Commerce Department numbers on its method of collecting data.

Erica Foye, a public affairs specialist for the agency, said visitation statistics are determined by surveys conducted on every international flight that arrives in the United States. Travelers list up to seven destinations they plan to visit on their trips, Foye said.

Tomono said by relying on those statistics alone, a number of Japanese immigrants living in California are missed when they visit Las Vegas. He said he added numbers from Southern California's Yermo inspection facility to the Commerce Department's statistics to arrive at the 900,000 total. He explained the Yermo facility collects data on the number of people who pass through the station.

The federal Immigration and Naturalization Service has a database showing what percentage of California residents are Asian Americans. The most recent estimate shows 3.8 percent of the population is Asian and 11.7 percent of that total is Japanese.

Tomono said those percentages are applied to the Yermo numbers to develop an estimate of U.S.-based Japanese traveling to Nevada.

Tomono said other potential sources to check statistics are through the agency that issues passports in Japan -- which requires travelers to disclose their destinations abroad -- and from the 32 local travel agencies that make arrangements for Las Vegas visitors from Japan.

In an article in the July issue of Yokoso, "Why Can't Johnny Count Japanese?" Tomono said he found Las Vegas resorts reluctant to talk about the number of Japanese visitors they served -- either for competitive reasons or because they didn't know.

"We found it astounding that management-level people, from department heads and sales-marketing personnel to the executive offices, claimed not to have even a general idea of the impact of the Japanese market on their properties," the newsletter said.

Tomono said if Las Vegas companies realized the impact the Japanese tourist has on the city, they would be more willing to spend money on resources to serve them and make the market even larger.

In the LVCVA's new market research report, one of the top recommendations is to increase traffic from Tokyo with a strategy of increasing consumer and trade advertising in key international markets.

McCarran International Airport also committed to spending $250,000 to market to the Japanese tourist market.

Tomono also said it's too early to tell what kind of impact the new Northwest Airlines and Japan Airlines nonstop flights between Tokyo and Las Vegas will have on increasing visits.

Northwest began twice-weekly operations in early June while Japan Airlines will begin twice-a-week nonstop flights in October.

Tomono said it usually takes at least six months for tourists to take advantage of a new route like the Tokyo-Las Vegas run when a leisure destination is involved.

He said routes between Nagoya and Detroit and Southern California were immediate successes because auto industry officials used flights for business travel. Nagoya is the center of Japan's automotive industry and flights were frequently used by Toyota executives flying to plants in California.