New Travel Promotion Service by Venture Republic and Hakuhodo DY Media Partners: Smartphone App Linked to Position Information

Venture Republic Incorporated, located in Minato-ku, Tokyo and headed by president and CEO Kei Shibata, has teamed up with Hakuhodo DY Media Partners Incorporated (HDYMP), another Minato-ku company led by Hisao Omori, to offer an O2O*1 service that distributes unique local sightseeing and gourmet dining information as well as TV program and movie content to smartphones, tablets, and other mobile computing devices in order to encourage real-world travel.

The first part of this new travel promotion service was the development of the Udoon! Ultimate Sanuki Navigator, an app that delivers information on Kagawa Prefecture’s famed Sanuki Udon restaurants to users’ mobile devices. Users can browse restaurant information, make Kagawa travel reservations, and get real-time directions to their chosen location using the app’s linked geographical positioning information.

The new service uses the Rocket Box*2 database service developed by HDYMP to deliver unique local information to application users, pushing information featured on TV programs, location-specific movies or other data, scenes from various locations, and more to users’ smartphone, tablet, or other mobile devices. Local airline ticket, tour, lodging, and other information is provided by Venture Republic via their travel comparison sites travel.jp and hotel.jp to encourage users to actually travel to the areas they are interested in. The goal is to provide an economic boost to tourist areas by motivating users to take action on their interest in travel (as reflected through data interaction with information on their smart devices), thus revitalizing the travel market.

The Udoon! Ultimate Sanuki Navigator mobile app provides information on more than 700 udon noodle restaurants in Kagawa Prefecture to users all across Japan—information and inside local tips that were collected from Sanuki Udon Zenten Seiha Koryaku Bon 2012 (Sanuki Udon Restaurant Ultimate Strategy Guide 2012) published by TJ Kagawa. Through the app, users can access a rich array of information (pictures of the restaurants and food, menus, addresses, and more) through the screens of their mobile devices.

In addition, the app’s travel.jp tie-up allows potential visitors to not only browse travel information, but also to search for tours and make travel reservations with ease.

Finally, once users are on location, the app accesses positioning information to show them how to get to the restaurant of their choice—and even allows them to set up a multiple-restaurant udon course through the area according to a certain category or theme. The result is a unique gourmet walking tour of the famed udon restaurants of Kagawa. The app allows users to easily post on their favorite social networking sites to share their travel experiences.

Venture Republic and HDYMP will continue to develop new applications so that users can get the most of this beneficial new service.