Trends in Japan - CScout Japan Blog » Gold Coast Cafe set to motivate travelers

Gold Coast Cafe set to motivate travelers

Written by: Rebecca Milner on September 15, 2008 at 12:05 am | In MARKETING IDEAS |

Tokyo has no shortage of theme restaurants, fantastical (and occasionally bizarre) spaces to transport customers temporarily and psychologically to another time and place. The new “Gold Coast Café” installment at the Travel Café in Shinjuku, however, is meant to actually inspire you to visit there.

Sponsored by the Australian and Queensland Tourism Board, the café has been turned into a three dimensional, multi-media brochure for the Gold Coast, with plasma screens playing promotional videos, travel books for available for browsing, and table tops papered over with pamphlet material. The white and blue design scheme is meant to evoke sandy beaches.

While all the branches of the Travel Café take travel, obviously, as their theme, the idea has to this point been more vague, such as interiors meant to evoke images of an airport lounge or “New York style” hotel bar.

Australia has long been a popular travel destination for Japanese from all demographics, although with rising fuel costs overseas destinations are facing stiffer competition from domestic ones.

On a somewhat related note, a recent survey by the Nikkei Marketing Journal asked 20-somethings to name the top three things on which they spend their pocket money. 10% selected domestic travel while 5% named overseas travel. Daily expenses and going out topped the list. On the other hand, reports the NMJ, if the same respondents had an extra ¥300,000 (about $2,800), 30% of the men and 40% of the women would spend it on domestic travel (the number two answer) while 25% of the men and 40% of the women picked overseas travel (third place). The number one answer was to put money in savings. If only the article gave us tips for getting that extra spending money…