and work together to promote what we have, rather than to compete within our community. To realize this, we must always be aware of foreign countries. The fact exists that while the number of Japanese tourists going abroad is small in comparison to those of other countries, the number of foreign tourists we receive is also unacceptably low, as was mentioned by Mr. Shimizu. I think that there is a solution, but we must tackle these problems in unison. Therefore, it is essential for us not to fight for a small piece of pie, but to collaborate to expand the pie itself.
Although the commercial video produced by the Australian Tourist Commission made me, as a Japanese person, feel somehow scared, their marketing strategy impressed me very much and I think that we need to adopt something similar.
Prof. Abe : Thank you very much. Next Mr. Shimizu, please.
Mr. Shimizu : I think there are three elements. One is the highly organized and finely tuned marketing strategies I described before and these may be most advanced in the private sector. The second is motivation. This is as much about motivating all the people here today, as anything else. To motivate people from so many differing fields, I think praise is where the education lies. The third is the necessary formation of a network linking restaurants, hotels and inns, travel agencies and so on, and this must be done thoroughly and well from the start.
Prof. Abe : Thank you. We have been able to discuss detailed aspects of the matter in a limited time. Apparently we are only on the verge of identifying the challenges for founding an infrastructure which can promote international tourism in the Kansai region. It is beyond my capacity to sum up the opinions of the three panelists, but I will try to highlight the points of discussion in the time we have left.
The first point was that the problems of inbound and outbound tourism should not be considered separately, and so it is not an issue of first achieving the former or vice versa. We have to recognize that m the "era of great tourism," or the era of large-scale international exchange, we will go abroad more and the foreign friends we make when abroad will come to our country more often. Japanese tourists account for 15-17 million of the over 500 million tourists traveling each year, a number which is comparatively low considering Japan's economic power. If the figures were in proportion to the presence of the JTB felt worldwide, 15-20 % of tourism exchange in the world, the figure for Japan would be 50-60 million people, therefore there is still scope for outbound tourism to be developed.
Based on all this, we have to consider international tourism. We heard a comment from the representative of the Ministry of Transport and as discussed by Mr. Shimizu, tourism is the strategic industry for the next generation. At present one of the issues the national government is discussing is which industry should be the key industry in the next stage of economic development. As shown in the case study of Australia, the problem is shifting from "what to do with the existing industries," to "how to combine those industries, with the lives of people and the communities they live in to form part of the strategic industries of the future."
I think we scholars are at best prophets and at worst pedantic theorists and you had better not count on what we say as our predictions rarely come true. Keeping this in mind, I would like to suggest that individual communities each initiate a scheme themselves.
There were reports on the Black Wall and the Amenomori region. It is said that this era has entered the stage of cooperation, having developed from mere exchange. In our global society, it is necessary to establish the concept of developing international exchange in all communities, along the lines of the concept of developing one product for each community alone as was once formulated in Oita Prefecture, Kyushu.
This means that by way of a certain strategy, the community will communicate with a particu-
