The 108-room Quincy, which opened in February, operates under a flat-rate system where the room charge includes airport pickup, three meals a day, evening cocktails, Internet use, mini-bar, limited amounts of laundry and all local calls. This transparent approach is a clear pitch at businesspeople being squeezed by tighter travel budgets, but appeals to the broader traveler who no longer understand why they should be overcharged for essentials like Internet or non-luxurious extras like a canned drink.

Quoted net rates for early July are SG$228 a night (US$157), an all-inclusive price that is competative for the city-state and, for consumers, laudably easy to understand. By comparison, the same night at The Scarlet would cost SG$175, room only (SG$263 with breakfast and airport pickup). The Naumi is SG$260 including minibar but excluding breakfast or pickup.

This will be a tough year for Singapore’s hotels, with 4,500 new rooms due to come online, even as the number of visitors falls, according to Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels.

The change of economic mood means that consumers are less tolerant of murky pricing policies and hidden extra charges. They still believe they deserve to travel in style. But if they are going to spend their money, they want to know what they’re getting in return. The Quincy is one example of a business response.

A woman relaxes after a work out in a germanium bath.

The era when a sports gym could get by with an array of exercise machines and perhaps a pool is over in Japan, where people are taking a more holistic approach to wellness. Innovative sports clubs are responding with with an array of new services.

Bodies, a women-only fitness club with 20 locations around Japan, features relaxation stations where women can soak their arms and feet in hot water infused with germanium, a popular treatment claimed to boost the immune system and combat free radicals that speed the aging process.

Recently opened in the trendy Daikanyama area of Tokyo, known for its quaint cafes and fashion boutiques, is Athlonia, Japan’s first sports gear shop specializing in triathlon equipment. The shop recently launched a triathlon school, held in collaboration with fitness club chain Tipness, and an adjoining Hawaiian cafe selling dishes with healthy ingredients such as avocado and brown rice.

Bodies also started a women-only running club, a decision it took after talking to its members as well as users of ABC Cooking Schools. There is a running studio in Marunouchi, an area of Tokyo home to a large number of female office workers. Women pop into the studio to change, then run 5km around the nearby Imperial Palace grounds, then return to the studio for a shower.

The club, which is open to beginners, advises members on improving themselves on several levels through running, fashion and beauty. The club’s website features “Beauty Recipes” for do-it-yourself health drinks, as well as organizing tours to the Honolulu Marathon.

Contact us for our ethnographic research on women’s changing attitudes to wellness.

Students at Athlonia's triathlon school.

Students at the ABC Cooking School in Marunouchi.

As we previously reported, the fact that men are behaving more like women makes them an increasingly attractive target for product developers and marketers, and some multinational corporations are responding accordingly. This shift is happening around the world, but especially in Japan, as well as South Korea and Greater China.

Here are some more examples of the shift in action in Japan, offering inspiration for other markets:

ABC Cooking Schools, with locations around Japan, is training an army of amateur chefs. Until two years ago, they only accepted female students. As the Baby Boomer generation began retiring, the competition began offering men-only classes for retirees. ABC took the step of starting co-ed classes at locations with a high density of corporate workers, such as Ginza and Marunouchi. The number of male students has quickly risen to around 600 at the schools.

Another service associated with women that has begun to patronized by men can be found at the 48 nail salons throughout Japan operated by Nail Quick. The number of male customers has risen to the level that the salons now offer a “men’s course” costing 2,940 JPY, and including disinfecting the hands, removing cuticles, and applying clear or colored polish.

One of more surprising hit products comes from underwear maker Wishroom, which has unveiled a men’s bra, which quickly became a top seller on the online shopping site Rakuten. The Wishroom store on the site claims the bra can give men a “calm, relaxed feeling”.

Click here for more insights on shifts in male behavior or ask for a sample report.

Oxford Circus, after it receives the Shibuya Treatment

London’s city planners are borrowing a very simple principle of Japanese pedestrian management – the “scramble” – to try and replicate Tokyo’s Shibuya Crossing in the West End. It will be a sociological as well as logistical innovation for the European city.

London has started consultations on a major regeneration of Oxford Circus, the juncture of Oxford St. and Regent St., according to the Evening Standard. The scheme would stop all traffic at the crossing for 30 seconds at a time to allow pedestrians to cross diagonally as well as perpendicularly, cutting in front of each other in all directions.

In Shibuya, the phenomenon of thousands of people intersecting uninterrupted by traffic is a major tourist attraction in its own right. It’s one of dozens of such diagonal pedestrian crossings in Tokyo and other major cites that streamline consumer paths between key retail areas and transport links. Thousand gather at these intersections as they wait to cross, providing marketers with a captive audience for advertising hoardings and outdoor TVs replaying commercials.

“The parallels between Shibuya and the West End are stark: [both are] important fashion and entertainment areas,” said Danny Chalkley, Westminster Council’s cabinet member for environment and transport.

However, the new crossing will also be a sociological test of citizens’ expectations of personal space. It remains to be seen how frayed Londoners will cope with the multi-directional onslaught of barging pedestrians, something tolerant Tokyoites are well used to.

If approved, work will be complete by spring 2011, in time for the 2012 Olympics.

Oxford Circus today

Shibuya Crossing

Narita Airport is Japan's gateway to the world. Will it see more or less traffic in the months to come?

For a long time we have known that Japanese in their 20s have less interest in traveling abroad than previous generations. But now that so many other formerly rich countries are going through Japan-style economic slumps of their own, is this a pattern that we will see repeated worldwide?

Visa recently conducted a worldwide study that found that two out of three travelers were rethinking their holiday plans this year. (Some newspapers decided it was positive that one in three wasn’t rethinking, surely a sign of negative headline fatigue.) If they weren’t going to cancel their breaks entirely, they were considering holidaying closer to home.

Some airlines are responding with dramatic fuel surcharge reductions (from 14,500 yen to 2,000 yen on an ANA flight from Tokyo to Singapore) or discount campaigns (“35,000 yen return” from Tokyo to London on British Airways), but others are already cutting schedules: JAL is currently operating 33% fewer flights to Bangkok.

As the Golden Week holidays approach, there are also signs that the Japanese travel market is at a tipping point that will strongly favor the domestic industry.

It’s worth noting that flights to SE Asia mid Golden Week are still available for as low as 35,000 yen return (on United), while prices to Okinawa remain sky high. That suggests that people are making travel plans not only for economic reasons; it also “feels wrong” in these lean economic times. There is a deeper shift in consumer behavior going on toward the local, the safe and the humble.

As more demographics choose to travel locally, expect a more diverse range of leisure options to develop in Japan targeted not only at the Silver Market and families with children, but also at sophisticated and wealthy consumers who used to go overseas. They will be looking for international-standard hospitality within easy reach of Japan’s urban centers. Products and services offering understated luxury, eco-awareness, wellness and experience will prosper.

Sanei has released a new line of Barbie golf fashions for young women.

Mattel, the maker of the popular Barbie doll, will be launching a new golf fashion line this fall in partnership with Sanei-International Corporation. Sanei directs an upscale line of Barbie clothing targeted at young women. The new Barbie golf line of fashion will be tied up with Sanei’s Pearly Gates line of golf apparel. Barbie-themed apparel, which will feature a Barbie silhouette and logo, “proposes fresh sophistication to fashion-sensitive female golfers,” says Sanei.

There is already a line of Barbie golf wear for kids.

The Japanese are well known for their love of golf. World-renowned golf destination Pebble Beach was even owned by Japanese businessman Minoru Isutani in the ‘90s. But until recently golf has increasingly become a pastime of the older generation.

In a country where Barbie has her own (expensive) fashion line aimed at young women, it is not such a leap for Mattel to go from regular fashion to golf fashion. The question is what moves like this could do to the world of golf. Is the typical golf consumer getting younger?

Natalie Meyer

A chandelier made out of popsicles.

Hisakazu Shimizu has made it his job to take ordinary items from day-to-day life and reshape them. As an industrial design artist at Canon, he has done this with his designs for popular cameras such as the Canon IXY. On the side, however, he does his own artwork, and seeks to bring through his own vision with his innovative works.

For his latest exhibition, Shimizu has taken popsicles and made them into works of art. His “The Things We Love” show at the SFT Gallery showcases artwork created out of ice cream spoons and Japanese style popsicles – ordinary, but that’s the point. Shimizu hopes that by taking these everyday items he can stir things up and in turn affect the viewer. He wants to resurrect the simple and powerful memories in the back of our minds that such items can evoke.

Shimizu also uses ice cream spoons in his work.

The title for the exhibition, “The Things We Love,” is a play on the similarity between the words for “love” and “ice,” ai and aisu. Aptly named, since “love” is precisely one of the emotions Shimizu aims to play off of with his work.

Natalie Meyer

Japanese and Indian shoppers mix in this photo mash-up.

Young Japanese in casual, earthy clothes look over items at a weekend flea market. Surprisingly, a cow pokes its head out from among the sellers. Billboards and food stalls from an Indian bazaar crop up in the background. The eye rescans the image while the mind tries to sort it all out. What parts are Tokyo and what parts are Mumbai?

This confusing and thought-provoking image is a Photoshop mash-up by Matias Sendoa Echanove and Rahul Srivastava, the minds behind Airoots, a blog on “adventitious roots, urban forests & villages, natural cities, lost tribes, new nomads, and everything in between.”

Japanese and Indian pedestrians walk the same road.

The mash-ups combine images of youth centers of Tokyo such as Shimokitazawa, which is known for its used clothing shops and bohemian atmosphere and the expansive bazaars of Mumbai. Bringing the two together challenges the distinction of developing countries and developed countries, and brings light to the appropriation of the bazaar aesthetic into trendy and expensive Tokyo neighborhoods such as Daikanyama.

Manga meets kama sutra in this photo mash-up.

Blogger Matias Sendoa Echanove splits his time between Tokyo and Mumbai, so is in the perfect position to bring the two cities together.

Turn the corner and jump from Tokyo to Mumbai.

The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo’s aptly futuristic Odaiba, is holding a special exhibition “The Science of Aliens” from March 20 to June 16 2008.

The Alien Exhibition, which was held under the title “The Science of Aliens” in London in 2005 for its initial appearance, “scientifically” pursues the possibility of the existence of extraterrestrial life. It also unravels the psychology of humans who have long been fascinated by the concept of alien lifeforms.

The exhibition also introduces a new word to our alien vocabulary – astrobiology, a new field of research that studies the possibility of the existence of life on planets other than earth, through various scientific fields including astronomy, planetary sciences and biology.

The exhibition site is composed of four areas. Of most interest is Zone 1, “Aliens in the Imaginary World”, which examines human psychology and the imaginary figures of aliens depicted in history and in the movies.

The alien queen from the movie Alien is on show, as are records of early witch trials, and games that exterminate animated monsters. “Let us not forget loveable humanlike aliens,” say the show’s organizers. “We will also introduce aliens that are depicted as cute and loveable figures.”

An advertisement announcing the collaboration between ANA and the eagerly awaited film Hana Yori Dango.

A noticeable slump in younger overseas travelers has the Japanese travel industry worried. According to the Japanese National Tourist Association, overseas travelers in their twenties have decreased 35% in the last 10 years, a noticeable difference in comparison with older travelers. Hiroshi Sawabe says that instead of going on vacations, the younger generation has taken to “traveling in their heads” via the Internet.

ANA has come up with a plan to win back this shrinking market segment. By offering a buzz-worthy travel promotion tied with the popular movie finale of Hana Yori Dango, which has a fan base ranging from teens to mid-30s, they can reach their target audience who might be inspired to go overseas by the exotic locations featured in the film.

Travelers are encouraged to visit locations featured in the film.

The travel package includes a choice of Hong Kong or Las Vegas, both of which are featured in the new movie, and gives travelers the option of going with a guide to locations from the film or exploring on their own. In other words, they can do whatever they like – as long as they go!

Natalie Meyer

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