Fan Travel as a Product: How Japan's Travel Agencies and Tourist Towns Price Oshi-Katsu Tours

Travel companies and hotels in Japan now sell packages that pair game viewing or fan events with an overnight stay. Some add a special experience, such as meeting the players, on top of the transport and lodging.

We covered pilgrimage as regional revitalization in Oshi-Katsu x Local Governments, and train and airline wraps and tie-ups in Oshi-Katsu x Railways and Airlines. Here we look at the experiences and perks built into travel products, and how they are priced. The seichi junrei, or anime pilgrimage, the trip fans make to real places that appear in their favorite works, runs through most of the examples.

Some Companies Now Build the Trip From the Oshi, Not the Destination

Travel product design has long been organized around the destination. Oshi-katsu travel reverses the order. The oshi comes first, and the destination follows. A filming location, a factory, a regional hall on a shared bill, an away stadium: fans move to the coordinates their oshi has set.

Origres, a young company that plans to develop itineraries and VIP experience tours tied to IP and artists going forward, has made that reversal its business. On May 27, 2026, it announced additional investment from the ANA Future Creation Fund, the corporate venture capital arm of the ANA Holdings group (operated by Global Brain), and from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital. The amount was not disclosed, but the company says sales are growing at a pace of 1,000% year over year (in Japanese). That an airline-group fund backed an IP-and-experience-focused comprehensive entertainment company shows how this field is now viewed.

The players fall into five broad layers.

OTA stands for online travel agency, and DMO for destination management organization.

Case 1: JTB x Hoshimachi Suisei — Lending Booking Power to the Content Side

On June 30, 2026, JTB announced “Project Stargazer” (in Japanese), a joint project with Hoshimachi Suisei, a virtual idol with COVER Corporation. For the music video of her new song, released the day before, JTB scouted filming locations in Japan and overseas.

• Aim: Build a point of contact with a new fandom, VTuber fans, in a way that isn’t merchandise
• What they did: Offered their location-scouting and arrangement functions to the content-production process
• The Lab’s take: This wasn’t selling a tour. It was building a travel agency’s actual work into the oshi’s story. A place that appears in the music video becomes a pilgrimage site the moment the video goes public. What’s new is that JTB moved to the side that creates the destination before it created the tour.

Case 2: Nihon Kuyu “Gutto-ri” — An Oshi-Katsu Feature Without Naming a Work

On July 17, 2026, “Gutto-ri,” a travel booking service run by the travel agency Nihon Kuyu, published a feature for oshi-katsu and nui-katsu travelers (in Japanese). It ties up with no specific title. Instead it gathers pilgrimage plans, concept cafés that serve drinks in your oshi color, and spots for nui-dori, photographing your plushie out and about. An app-only ¥1,500 off coupon and a birthday coupon (10% off) run alongside.

• Aim: Make the behavior called “oshi-katsu” a product category in itself, without depending on any IP
• What they did: Re-edited existing inventory in an oshi-katsu context, and lowered the barrier to a first purchase with coupons
• The Lab’s take: It’s a cost-effective approach, because it rearranges the shelves without creating any inventory. The weakness is just as clear. An IP-specific product can say “let’s go to the pilgrimage sites of X,” but a generic one leaves the user to decide where to go. The coupons can be read as filling that gap of indecision.

Case 3: LOVOT Pilgrimage Tour — A Manufacturer Builds the Tour Itself

GROOVE X, maker of the household robot LOVOT, turned Izunokuni, the Shizuoka Prefecture city where its factory stands, into the setting for a two-day, one-night meetup tour in a chartered hotel (in Japanese). From September 16 to 17, 2026, it included a prayer for good health at Mishima Taisha shrine, lunch on a chartered Izuhakone Railway train, a night at Hotel Tenbo, and a visit to the World Heritage Nirayama Reverberatory Furnace. The fee is ¥63,000 per person for two sharing a room and ¥71,000 for a single.

• Aim: Position the factory as a “pilgrimage site” and turn the relationship with the region into a fan experience
• What they did: The manufacturer partnered with a local bus company (Izuhakone Bus planned and conducted the tour), bundling lodging, a chartered train and local sightseeing into one itinerary
• The Lab’s take: What stands out is that the product originated with the manufacturer rather than the travel agency. The maker holds the fan list, so the odds of sending customers are high from the start. It also means tourism associations are not the only party to pitch a plan to.

Case 4: Shimizu S-Pulse Supporter Discount — Making the Trip Itself the Product

On July 3, 2026, JR Tokai Tours launched the “Shimizu S-Pulse Supporter Discount” (in Japanese) to go with its premium partner contract with the J.League club Shimizu S-Pulse. Coupons can be used until June 5, 2027. The more often you travel, the bigger the discount. It covers both day trips and overnight plans, and Shinkansen times can be changed for free as many times as needed, both after booking and on the day. The eligible area extends to trips starting or ending west of Shin-Kobe, covering home and away games alike.

• Aim: Lock in the repeat behavior of ensei, traveling to see your oshi, with a staircase of discounts
• What they did: Used the partner contract with the club as the way in, and built a dedicated product for supporters
• The Lab’s take: We think the heart of this product is not the discount rate but one point: Shinkansen times can be changed for free any number of times. Matches go into extra time, the end of a concert can’t be predicted, and the trip home from an away game is always a tightrope. Travel for oshi-katsu carries its own risk of not ending on schedule, and few products yet respond to it.

Case 5: Hilton Tokyo Odaiba x Alvark Tokyo — A ¥169,448 Game-Viewing Stay

In the Hilton Tokyo Odaiba x Alvark Tokyo lodging plan (in Japanese), a hotel goes after game viewing from its own side. The plan covers all eight games of the 2026-27 season for the basketball club Alvark Tokyo, and the first is planned for the game against Utsunomiya Brex on October 31 to November 1, 2026. From ¥169,448 for two people in one room (tax and service charge included), it guarantees two rows of courtside seats across from the players’ bench, followed after the game by a commemorative photo on the court, with players signing items you bring. The package also includes a 40-square-meter room, access to a lounge normally limited to suite and executive guests, merchandise designed with the mascot Luke and a special cake, and breakfast.

• Aim: Add value to a stay by starting from game viewing, and open up a new sports-fan segment
• What they did: Sell seats and player contact that can’t be bought on their own only as a set with the room
• Booking: Bookings for later games are being accepted in turn
• The Lab’s take: The basis of the price is neither the room nor the meals but the seats and time that never reach the market as single items. A hotel can’t produce these by itself, so its relationship with the club becomes its product strength. Yet ¥169,448 reaches only a small share of fans. The plan has to be accepted as one for top-tier customers.

What Happens When a Tourism Association Sets the Price

It isn’t only companies. Regions also assemble products themselves. In Yonezawa, Yamagata, on August 9, 2024, the Yonezawa Anime Tourism Promotion Council planned and the Yonezawa Tourism Convention Association conducted a travel product (in Japanese) touring the filming locations of the film Suki demo Kirai na Amanojaku. It has three tiers: a day trip by rental bicycle for ¥4,000, an overnight course at the inn from the film with a Yonezawa beef sukiyaki dinner for ¥21,000, and a day-trip experience for ¥4,800.

The point of splitting the price range was clear: overnight for distant, committed fans, and a day trip for nearby, casual participants. The design offers entrances to the same pilgrimage site for different wallets.

Another established form turns the visit into a “collecting” experience by tying it to goshuin, the temple and shrine seals visitors collect, as in the anime pilgrimage goshuin stamp rally (in Japanese) that Saitama Prefecture announced in December 2024.

The groundwork is spreading beyond tourism, too. On March 16, 2026, FamilyMart became the first retail and distribution company to join the Anime Tourism Association (in Japanese). The association selects and updates its “88 Anime Sacred Sites in Japan You’d Like to Visit” by fan vote, and the certification of sites and the routes to visit them are coming together as a cross-industry system.

Patterns That Work and Patterns That Trip Up

There have been almost no cases of travel products failing loudly or drawing large-scale backlash. Unlike limited-quantity giveaways, they have a weak “first come, first served” structure, so resale and hoarding are less likely. That doesn’t mean they are safe. A travel product’s failure shows up not as backlash but in the quiet form of weak sales.

Steps to Productize: For Planners

1. Decide which layer to compete in first: Arrangements, inventory editing or experience building. Doing all three at once breaks both cost and promotion
2. Find the party with the fan list: A club, label, manufacturer or production committee. This one point largely decides how reliably you can send customers
3. Include one thing that can’t be bought on its own: A seat, a time, a place or a person. A product without one loses the price comparison against arranging the trip yourself
4. Set at least two price tiers: Use Yonezawa’s pairing of ¥4,000 and ¥21,000 as the baseline
5. Write change and cancellation terms for oshi-katsu: Canceled shows, extended matches, schedule changes for fans who attend every performance. Under standard terms, your best-buying segment can’t buy
6. State the photo-friendly moments in the itinerary: Nui-katsu and photography become a product the moment you write them in the schedule
7. Work backward from rights clearance: Use of the work’s name, use of characters, whether photos are allowed, whether social posting is allowed. In particular, settle “may participants take photos?” before you announce
8. Build the second round into the first: Products that keep the next run inside the first, such as a staircase of discounts or games across a full season, last longer

What has been published on cost is only the participation fee. None of the companies discloses the operator’s costs or the level of sponsorship money. The same goes for lead time, but in practice it is common to build the structure several months ahead, in line with the club’s season schedule or the IP’s release timing.

Notes From The Oshi Lab: Can Travel Companies Take Back the Job of Choosing the Destination?

The trickiest thing about oshi-katsu travel is that fans already know where to go. Pilgrimage sites, concert halls and away stadiums are all shared on social media. A travel company whose job is to tell people where to go was never needed in this field.

Still, companies have been able to enter because they changed what they sell. JTB moved from telling people where to go to helping choose. What JR Tokai Tours sold was not a ticket but insurance that things will be fine even when plans fall apart. What Hilton sold for ¥169,448 was not a room but seats found nowhere else and a few minutes after the game. Only what can’t be replaced by individual arrangements survives as a product. That filter will get stricter from here.

What we are watching next is the split in price ranges. The ¥169,448 plan and the ¥4,000 rental bicycle are grouped under the same phrase, oshi-katsu travel, yet they reach entirely different people. Lean toward high-priced limited experiences and more people can’t join; lean toward the generic and the destination becomes invisible. Yonezawa’s three price tiers were a small region’s ingenuity, but the idea of offering several entrances to the same pilgrimage site works at any scale. Let a trip to meet your oshi start from any wallet: we believe that is the job left for travel companies and destinations.

For consultation on designing oshi-katsu for travel products and tourism initiatives, contact KAZAORI Inc. (in Japanese). You can also try the Oshi Score Check (free diagnostic) (in Japanese).

Related articles: Oshi-Katsu x Local Governments / Oshi-Katsu x Railways and Airlines / What Is Seichi Junrei? / Ensei Packing Checklist