島ぜんぶでおーきな祭-第7回沖縄国際映画祭-

Several giants of entertainment gathered for a panel at Yoshimoto Kagestu Theater on Thursday March 26 to disclose plans for the development of Okinawa as a tourist destination.
 

Moderated by Ichiya Nakamura, the panel discussion saw representatives from Twitter, Gyao! (Yahoo), Ryuko Holdings, Warner Entertainment and the Okinawa Tourism Board take to the stage to reveal their strategies to boost travel to the prefecture.

Ryubo Holdings President Goichi Itokazu spoke first to the crowded auditorium, with details of the new Haunted House the first topic, aimed at presenting Naha as a fun destination for Children and adults. “The projects may be small in scale but tourism is rising in Okinawa,” said Shigenobu Asato of the Okinawa Tourism Board. Most of the region’s tourism had been from domestic travellers he revealed, even though “18 months ago we had the lightest budget in Japan,” he said.

“80 per cent are repeaters who don’t spend much” Asato lamented. “The average spend is going down, so we have a product strategy problem and need to be more novel,” he explained.

Kazuhiro Misawa of Twitter Japan announced several strategies that the social media company is implementing that he believes could be utilized by Okinawa prefecture to help change this.

“Twitter wants to reach the senior age bracket,” he said. Having started using videos at end of last year for advertisers to post on the timeline, users too can post 30 second clips, and the company will begin live streaming as part of its portfolio, something he thought could be used by Okinawa to reach a wider audience.

Yusuke Dan of, Gyao!, a part of Yahoo Japan, similarly expressed the potential of his online outlet to help Okinawa spread its culture to the wider world. “We have 20 million users for our video content currently,” he said. “We are the department store of the Internet.” Nakamura would go on to conclude that such avenues represented one of three ways in which Okinawa can focus its strategy, albeit that these would be domestic-focused.

Dr. Hideyuki Negoro provided a different perspective on Okinawa culture, its famed health and long life expectancy. However, due the influence of cars and a changing diet, he point out that while the prefecture used to have Japan’s longest life expectancy, it has slipped back to 20^th position amongst the 47 national prefectures.

Despite this, Okinawa benefits from “a mixed culture,” though, said Itokazu, putting a positive spin on the challenges the area faces. “We have an advantage of being closest to Asia, plus we have wonderful nature and warmth of the people.” 

Nakamura concluded the discussions, summing up that along with online options for promotion, the region needed to utilise its location as its asset, which has created its slow pace of life and multicultural make-up. Thirdly, he summized, Okinawa must invite more “first class specialists to the prefecture to train and educate locals so that Okinawa can develop further.