Pacific Magazine > Magazine > January 1, 2008

Japan Tourism

Doing It Right

Pioneering Japanese Entrepreneur’s Tourism Formula

By Suzanne Chutaro, Marshall Islands Journal

Satoshi Yoshii, President of Three Wins. PHOTO: Suzanne Chutaro

YOKOHAMA— Satoshi Yoshii is out to prove that one person can make a difference. He has played the pivotal role in giving the Marshall Islands a chance to be a player in Japan’s huge outbound tourism market. And he is making sure that tourism development in the Marshall Islands is not only done but that it is done right.

Yoshii is the founder and president of the Three Wins, the Yokohama, Japan-based parent company of Marshall Island Tours. Yoshii’s vision is to ensure that tourism in the islands is not just a “win-win” situation, where only the business owner and the customer win. He believes it must be a win-win-win situation, in which everybody is a winner —businesses, customers and the Marshall Islands. Thus the company’s unusual moniker, Three Wins.

When it comes to tourism development, Yoshii acknowledges that it will take years of trial and error to get it right. In the case of the Marshall Islands he senses opportunity to develop using lessons learned from other tropical destinations such as Saipan, Palau or the Maldives.

“We are behind in our (tourism industry) therefore we can learn and develop different approaches,” notes Yoshii.

One successful example of Yoshii’s different approach to developing the Marshall Islands is evident in Japan Airlines’ new non-stop charter flights between Tokyo and Majuro. After raising his concern about the atolls’ fragile coral environment, the airline agreed to carry back all the trash produced by passengers who travel to the Marshall Islands aboard its aircraft.

“Eighty-five percent of the customers say they like this (environmentally friendly) approach,” Yoshii says. “Tourism is an important key to develop the Marshall Island but we have to preserve the environment.”

Yoshii has been promoting the Marshall Islands to Japan’s dive market for the past 10 years. He says his company is shifting its marketing efforts to attract and cater to both divers and general tourists.

“There is a real future for the Marshall Islands to capture both the low-yield and high-yield customers and with the many different islands this is possible,” says Yoshii.  “Landowners can earn more by leasing their land out than just letting it sit there unused.”

As well as developing his own company to promote the Marshall Islands, Yoshii is also contracted as the Asia representative for the Marshall Islands Visitor’s Authority. His responsibilities now include tapping into the Korean and Taiwanese markets.

Recently Yoshii and the Marshall Islands Visitor’s Authority opened a new visitor center in Tokyo’s trendy Harajuku district, and another in Taipei, Taiwan.

“We’ve just started (tapping into the market),” says Yoshii smiling as he
remembers his first year in the Marshall Islands in 1998 when he working as a dive master and had two Japanese divers all year.

As of June 2007, the Marshall Islands Visitors Authority reported that 1,182 “true tourists” visited the Marshall Islands. This was a 55 percent increase over the previous year, which is attributed to the three charter flights from Japan Airlines earlier in the year.
Japan Airlines was scheduled to operate three more charters from Japan before the end of the year. They were scheduled to arrive in Majuro on November 22, December 20 and the 27 and each flight was expected to carry 200 passengers.

The influx is good news for the Marshall Islands’ fledgling tourism
industry, and with it comes a host of obstacles. They include training hotel and dive operations staff, offering enough non-dive attractions, and clean villages and lagoons.

But Yoshii sees these as opportunities as much as challenges. “I know the reality and I know the problems,” he says. “Once the problem is known we can solve it.”