YURAGI advances a high-value experience model through Japanese traditional crafts × an inbound strategy

YURAGI (Willverse Inc., Representative Director Haruto Asahina) has launched an initiative that works with local content operators across Japan to turn inbound experiences into high-value offerings. In this first case, YURAGI has partnered with the long-established hanko (seal) shop Daihodo Fujimaki Inbo (Daihodo Fujimaki Inbo Ltd., Representative Director Masasaku Fujimaki) to redesign a hanko-carving experience — previously offered to a domestic audience — into an experience program purpose-built for international visitors.

What distinguishes this initiative is that experience, pricing, and operations are designed as one, implementing a price for inbound travelers that differs from the price for Japanese customers (so-called dual pricing). YURAGI handles interpretation, cultural narration, and the storytelling of the entire experience, so the content operator can serve inbound guests from day one without significantly changing its existing operations.

As growth in visitor numbers begins to hit its ceiling, what Japan's inbound sector needs is to strengthen its foreign-currency earning power by raising per-visitor spend. This case is a working example showing that dual pricing is not merely a topic of debate but can hold up in the field.

The structural challenge facing the inbound industry

While Japan's inbound industry is on a recovery track, future growth patterns can be broadly sorted into two directions. One is welcoming visitors into regions that have not yet fully hosted inbound tourism. In urban areas, overtourism and infrastructure strain are becoming issues, but in the regions there remain many voices saying "we want to start welcoming inbound visitors" and "we want to tie this to regional revitalization" — room to bring inbound guests into local areas still exists.

The other is raising the per-visitor spend of travelers already being hosted. Japan's current per-visitor spend is not necessarily high by international standards, and in fields such as food, culture, crafts, and experiences, there remain many areas where value has not been fully reflected in price. This is not a temporary factor tied to exchange rates or inflation; it means there is structural upside as a matter of experience design and pricing design.

What the inbound industry will need going forward is, depending on each region's situation, how to combine these two growth patterns — and that combination is the key to sustainable development.

The headroom to grow per-visitor inbound spend

Japan's current per-visitor inbound spend remains at roughly JPY 220,000–230,000, which is not necessarily high by international standards. As growth in visitor numbers begins to hit its ceiling, raising per-visitor spend is a realistic and sustainable growth lever that increases economic impact while limiting the burden on local areas. As one benchmark along that trajectory, YURAGI sees a level of around JPY 600,000 coming into view over the medium to long term.

In international tourism markets, in tourism-dependent countries premised on long-haul travel and in regions whose strength is high-value tourism, longer stays and the accumulation of experiential consumption produce a structure in which per-visitor travel spend reaches high levels. In Australia and Western countries, the combination of cultural experiences, nature experiences, food, and urban experiences results in larger spend.

Japan, too, concentrates diverse content — food culture, traditional crafts, nature, urban experiences — within a single country. The reason current spend has stagnated is not that Japan's value is low, but that the value of its experiences has not been sufficiently edited, translated, and presented as price. With appropriate experience design and pricing design, there is ample room to raise spend step by step from current levels.

YURAGI focuses on this structural headroom and works to raise per-visitor spend in ways that can actually be implemented in the field.

Why per-visitor spend has not risen in Japan

Behind the stagnation of Japan's per-visitor inbound spend lie structural barriers to advancing pricing design, including dual pricing.

Specifically: concern that a price gap will be perceived as "unfair" or "discriminatory"; the difficulty of designing an experience worthy of the price; the operational burden of language support and explaining cultural context; and a lack of marketing to convince customers of "why this price." These challenges have been a heavy load for local content operators to solve on their own.

What matters is that this situation did not arise from operators' lack of effort or awareness. Rather, the main factor constraining growth in per-visitor spend has been the absence of a mechanism that supports experience design, pricing design, operations, and marketing in an integrated way.

About YURAGI

YURAGI is a premium inbound content service produced by members who have driven marketing and business development across industries at consulting firms and mega-ventures. Going beyond mere referral or experience sales, YURAGI designs experience, pricing, operations, and marketing as one, re-editing and delivering content from across Japan as high-value experiences that hold up in international markets.

What it means for YURAGI to partner with local content operators

YURAGI partners with local content operators not simply "to increase inbound visitors." What we face are the front lines where value has been built up over many years across Japan, yet that value has not been adequately received as price.

Many content operators have continued their daily work while protecting their techniques, culture, history, and philosophy. At the same time, toward inbound they have carried tensions such as "we truly believe there is value, but we hesitate to raise the price" and "explanation and support are difficult, so we can't take the step."

Toward such operators, our basic stance is not to demand unreasonable change from local businesses. Without breaking the prices and relationships they have built for Japanese customers, we correctly translate that value for an overseas audience and deliver it. We believe that is the role YURAGI plays.

We take on experience design, pricing design, interpretation and cultural narration, and marketing as one. By assuming the risks and burdens that local operators have shouldered alone, we build an environment in which value can be established as price. That is why YURAGI does not stop at "the referral business" but walks alongside the regions.

Partnership case: Daihodo Fujimaki Inbo × YURAGI

YURAGI partnered with the long-established hanko shop Daihodo Fujimaki Inbo to redesign a hanko-carving experience — previously offered to a domestic audience — into a high-value experience for inbound visitors. This partnership is a concrete, in-the-field implementation of YURAGI's philosophy of "translating value and establishing it as price."

While hanko are familiar to Japanese people, for those from overseas they are a highly unique object symbolizing writing culture, contract culture, and identity. In this initiative, we went beyond mere craft-making to re-edit it as a cultural experience that includes the background of kanji and seal culture and its historical meaning.

For the inbound experience, YURAGI handles interpretation, cultural narration, and the flow of the entire experience in one package. As a result, Fujimaki Inbo can serve overseas customers without significantly changing its existing production process or operations and without additional staffing or capital investment.

On pricing, the inbound price is set at roughly 1.5 times the experience price for Japanese customers. This is not a mere price increase but is based on the total value — including the redesign of the experience, the addition of a story, and interpretation support. As a result, a model is established that increases the return to the local operator without undermining customers' sense that the price is justified.

Outlook

Going forward, YURAGI will continue to advance the implementation of high-value inbound experiences by partnering with, and taking over the businesses of, content operators rooted in local communities — across traditional crafts, food culture, spiritual culture, nature experiences, and more. What we aim for is not a model dependent on a temporary boom or the exchange-rate environment, but an inbound structure that keeps holding up even as the environment changes.

Global inflation and a weak yen are currently a tailwind for Japan's inbound industry, but a consumption structure dependent on that alone is not sustainable. What matters is building up, from the local front lines, experience value that will keep being chosen even after exchange rates return to normal. By taking on experience design, pricing design, operations, and marketing as one, YURAGI aims to create a state in which high-value experiences become the "standard."

Moreover, raising per-visitor inbound spend is not merely a measure to expand economic scale. If the economic return brought to a region grows even with the same number of people, the region can position inbound not as "something to endure and accept" but as something it actively chooses and welcomes with pride. This also connects to avoiding overtourism and preserving local culture.

YURAGI will continue to grow the inbound industry as an important service-export industry for Japan — and, ultimately, as part of a core national industry.

Contact

YURAGI works together with local content operators to produce high-value experiences for inbound travelers. Companies that are positive about attracting overseas travelers are welcome to consult with us. (Email: yuragi-support@willverse.io)