World practices of industrial tourism: case study of Japan

This paper is based on the hypothesis that the potential of tourism in the country’s sustainable economic development is still underestimated. Empirical methods are applied to analyze the organizational specifics of industrial tourism in a highly developed country using the case of Japan. The concept of industrial tourism over the past decades has evolved from visiting production sites to understanding the need to transform them into tourist sites with complex planning of services. The active development of industrial tourism in Japan began in 2006 when it was included in the national tourism strategic promotion plan; its potential is directly related to the success of the industrial revolution of the XIX century, the «Japanese economic miracle» of the 2nd half of the XX century and a course towards advanced technologies in the XXI century. The field research has included an analysis of the capabilities of visited sites based on publications on the Internet and an analysis of scientific literature to identify the problems and prospects of industrial tourism in Japan. The illustrations are organized in tabular format by industry and are provided with a brief description. Among the achievements, it can be noted that four industrial sites are included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, and the town of Aya in Miyazaki Prefecture, owing to an integrated approach, is visited annually by more than one million tourists. The Japanese model of industrial tourism is featured by a variety of tourist sites and services, a wide coverage of historical and modern economic sectors, and availability of management structures and coordinating councils. It is revealed that there is a need in using modern systemic methods in planning - assessment of the tourist-recreational resources potential for a region, complex business modelling of tourism services and digitalization of the results using an electronic information platform with a built-in filter system and artificial intelligence for planning «seamless» trips.