Speakers : from left to right — Koji Abe, Sunny Long, Miho Tanaka, Per Arne Friestad and Victor Gram Thomsen
- Koji Abe, the regional representative of JTB Hokkaido
- Per Arne Friestad, the CEO of Nordic TravelTech Lab
- Sunny Long, the Global CEO of Pie Systems
- Victor Gram Thomsen, co-founder & head of infrastructure at Tryp.com
to discuss about how we can activate TravelTech ecosystem in Hokkaido.
Koji Abe, the regional representative of JTB Hokkaido introducing the beauty of Hokkaido
Koji Abe (the regional representative of JTB Hokkaido) :
Hokkaido is surrounded by three oceans — the Japan sea, the Pacific Ocean, and the Okhotsk sea — this geographical uniqueness is the main source of producing a variety of fresh seafood by bringing rich nutrients from the oceans.
Photo by TERRA on Unsplash
Hokkaido in numbers
22%
of the land in Japan belongs to Hokkaido. ⛰
5.14 million
is the population in Hokkaido. The population density is 67 persons/km2 — which is only 20% of the average population density of Japan (338 persons/km2). 👫
16
sake breweries are located within Hokkaido. 🍶
60
wineries are in Hokkaido. 🍷
200+
onsen are in Hokkaido — a wonderful paradise. 🧖♀️
153
years since this vast island was named Hokkaido after immigrants moved from the mainland Japan.
History and world heritage
Hokkaido has various world and cultural heritages, not to mention Ainu, the indigenous people.
Shiretoko Peninsula
Shiretoko provides an outstanding example of the interaction of marine and terrestrial ecosystems as well as extraordinary ecosystem productivity, largely influenced by the formation of seasonal sea ice at the lowest latitude in the northern hemisphere. (by UNESCO World Heritage Centre)
Jomon Prehistoric Sites
The archeological sites bear a unique testimony to the development over some 10,000 years of the pre-agricultural yet sedentary Jomon culture and its complex spiritual belief system and rituals. It attests to the emergence, development, maturity and adaptability to environmental changes of a sedentary hunter-fisher-gatherer society which developed from about 13,000 BCE. (by UNESCO World Heritage Centre)
Shiretoko
How we can utilize these existing rich resources in Hokkaido to flourish TravelTech cluster?
Per Arne Friestad (the CEO of Nordic Travel Tech Lab):
Nordic Travel Tech Lab is founded by people who were originally working for in Innovation Norway and Visit Norway, and we are building an ecosystem
Back in 2018, we were looking at what the different countries were doing for startups and how to collaborate among startups and industry players. There was no program to bridge them. In order to initiate our activity, we received some public funding from Nordic Innovation and we teamed up with Innovation and Tourism in Denmark. We have a matchmaking arena, international network and an incubator program.
Incubator program for TravelTech startups
We have two focus scraps — one is “fundraising” part in collaboration with Startup Norway that has been developing the fundraising opportunities for startups for the last decade. Another part is “traction” part where you go specifically to the travel industry. Both Pie System and Tryp.com went through our incubation program.
Sunny Long (the Global CEO of Pie Systems) :
A few years ago we participated the incubation program that Nordic Travel Tech Lab organized, and we are happy to reunite here.
The mission of Pie Systems is to supercharge tourism. On that respect, how can we make the lives of travelers better and easier when you think about tourism in foreign locations?
We are creating a platform that bridges inbound tourists and local businesses in real times. We are partnering with the local businesses how do they leverage our platform to get the tourists and encouraging that gap.
We are starting with tax-free shopping. Inbound tourists travel abroad and we are eligible to get tax refund — we are partnering up with over 40,000 stores in Europe.
Why Hokkaido?
In the platform that we envision, obviously we see a lot of tourists coming to Hokkaido for skiing but when we look at local businesses, how can we help and empower them? We often see people, stores or local businesses not having the capabilities or the funding to maximize the opportunities. When we look at Hokkaido, it really maximize the local partners and local businesses to get out of it with the power of our platform.
Victor Gram Thomsen (the co-founder & head of infrastructure at Tryp.com):
We are Tryp.com, a Danish-based company. We use artificial intelligence to generate fully customized trip package with both transportation and accommodation, because traveling is really great and awesome but planning isn’t — especially if we want to do multiple destinations and if we are trying to price optimized. You will probably have 10 types of travel platform opened across four windows — we strip this experience away.
One of the things that we do differently is to empower AI approaches to extremely narrow the view of what the transportation and traveling market actually looks like at this moment in time.
We offer inspirational traveling — especially the places that is not realistic for everyone to know about, but AI can get you anywhere if the transportation exists. We are currently expanding our selection on Japan as well as having a lot of locations in the world. We only suggest your stops abstractly and then let you narrow down as far as you want to.
It made a ton of sense for me to move to Hokkaido because it’s a super supportive ecosystem and this is one of the places that I want travelers to see and explore.
Sharing knowledge and build the cluster together.
Per Arne Friestad (the CEO of Nordic Travel Tech Lab):
When we were exploring our ecosystem and building our network, “knowledge sharing” was the first thing to bridge network across the world.
Lots of things are different in different regions. By sharing knowledge, working with startups, opening up the problems and sharing what startups want to achieve, you will get more engagement.
Victor Gram Thomsen (co-founder & head of infrastructure at Tryp.com):
The reasons of why we were attending some programs were getting the knowledge of existing industries. Especially airplane industry is a really common complex old space that hasn’t seen a lot of innovation for a while and controlled by some very large powers. I am trying to maneuver and understand what works and what doesn’t. Getting this knowledge from the people and companies that have worked on it and sharing knowledge with the existing companies is a powerful driver for startups to quickly implement and move forward.
Sunny Long (the Global CEO of Pie Systems) :
Knowledge sharing with veterans is extremely important, and copying the others and learning from the others are vital. We work with local partners and local businesses on the ground, so it is really with the cities and the folks that really want to show that the local businesses can thrive.
Koji Abe (the regional representative of JTB Hokkaido) :
On top of all the insights from startups, I think it’s crucial to cultivate the global mindset among people in Hokkaido. We need an education system to develop the global mindset from an early age so that students can also come up with ideas on how to promote the rich resources available in Hokkaido to the global market.
Thank you everyone for joining to think about the future of TravelTech in Hokkaido — with the arrival of some inspirational TravelTech founders, we are now in front of the start line of building a cluster.