B Corp-certified tour operator Inside Travel, the parent company behind the InsideJapan and InsideAsia brands, has released its 2025 Impact Report, revealing early success from InsideJapan’s “Undertourism” strategy.
The report lands as Japan, South Korea and Vietnam continue to see record international visitor numbers, with tourism heavily concentrated in a handful of well-known hotspots.
InsideJapan launched its Undertourism strategy in 2025, focusing on five regions – Yamaguchi, Nagasaki, Toyama, Nagoya and Aomori – chosen against criteria including visitor numbers, local capacity, community appetite for tourism and accessibility for international travellers.
The strategy set a target of doubling room nights booked across the five regions to 1,000 in 2025 – a target it exceeded, with one in 10 InsideJapan trips featuring one of the regions and Toyama proving particularly popular. The initiative also generated more than AU$502,400 in visitor spending across the five regions.
Inside Travel head of impact Rob Moran said the strategy was designed to test whether a tour operator could meaningfully influence where travellers choose to go.
“We wanted to demonstrate that ‘Undertourism’ could be more than an idea – that a tour operator could actively influence where people travel and, in doing so, help destinations battle urban migration and preserve culture while improving the experience for travellers,” Moran said.
Buoyed by the 2025 results, InsideJapan has more than doubled its 2026 target to 2,500 room nights across the five regions. As of August 2026, the company had reached 73 per cent of that target, with one in five trips now including one of the five destinations.
Moran said the figures pointed to a genuine link between positive impact and commercial performance.
“The results so far in 2026 show that travellers are increasingly willing to look beyond Japan’s best-known destinations, creating opportunities for communities while offering our customers a different experience of the country,” he said.
Inside Travel is now examining whether the Undertourism model could be extended to other InsideAsia destinations, including South Korea, India, Vietnam and Thailand.
Inside Travel co-founder Simon King said the shifting nature of tourism in Japan had made the approach increasingly important.
“When InsideJapan began 25 years ago, Japan was a very different tourism destination. Today, the challenge is not encouraging people to discover Japan – it is helping ensure that the benefits of that growth are shared more widely and that the experience of Japan continues to be special,” King said.
“Our latest Impact Report shows that responsible business is not something separate from what we do. It is increasingly becoming fundamental to how we design our trips, work with our partners and think about the future of travel.”
