Kyoto City Mayor Daisaku Kadokawa has announced the completion of a project to renew and enhance the usability of Kyoto City's official website for foreign travelers, the “Kyoto Official Travel Guide.”

In July of this year, Kyoto was ranked as “World's Best City” in the “World's Best Awards 2014” readers' poll of Travel & Leisure magazine, one of the world's most influential travel magazines.

Mayor Kadokawa said, “With the confirmation of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics and the world's attention focusing on Japan, the City of Kyoto is taking measures to enhance our ability to send out information about the attractions of Kyoto to foreign travelers.”

“At this time we would like to announce that our foreign traveler-targeted Kyoto tourism website established in 2007, the “Kyoto Official Travel Guide,”has undergone an extensive and comprehensive renewal.”

“We would like for this site to function as a portal for the world to Kyoto, and to improve our ability to send out information about Kyoto to the world.”

1　Date of renewal　　

　　Wednesday Nov. 12, 2014, 3 PM

2　Website Address　

　　URL: www.kyoto.travel 

3　Points addressed by the renewal

(1)  Cooperation with TripAdvisor, the world's biggest travel information site

Adding a link to TripAdvisor on the top page of the “Kyoto Official Travel Guide” and the accommodation booking page makes it possible for travelers to compare the information of Kyoto City's official website with word-of-mouth information by travelers, making it easier for users to select a hotel that fits their needs.

(2) Cooperation with private companies makes possible reservation of accommodations, experiences, restaurants and shopping

With the cooperation of private companies, we have added links on the “Kyoto

Official Travel Guide” website to said companies' websites, gathering more information in one place and increasing the Travel Guide's ability to draw in customers.

This change will make it easier for users to access concrete information relevant to their needs in addition to the official information at the Kyoto City website, and the functionality of being able to book reservations at the linked sites will increase the overall usefulness of the website.

(3) Support for 13 languages- more than any other domestic local government

Support for 5 more languages added to previous support for 8, for a total of 13.

Supported languages (italicized languages were added this time).

English, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Hangul, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Malay, Turkish, Arabic, Thai, Russian 

(4) Multimedia support

Over 40% of foreign travelers gather trip information using mobile devices, and for this reason we have adopted a display method (responsive design) that works with various media. Presently Kyoto City is cooperating with private companies to make it possible to access the “Kyoto Official Travel Guide” with mobile devices at the 656 KYOTO Wi-Fi locations in the city, located at subway stations, bus stops, etc., so that the guide can be consulted during a trip and not just before the trip.

About TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor (Based in the USA) is the world's most popular trip information website, used in 38 countries and with over 280,000,000 monthly users.

In addition to word-of-mouth reviews of accommodations, tourist destinations and restaurants, TripAdvisor also publish rankings made with data gathered by the company. Notably, Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine was ranked number 1 in a list of Japanese tourist destinations popular with foreign travelers this year, gathering attention within Japan.

TripAdvisor offers useful functions desired by users such as being able to compare accommodation prices from multiple internet reservation sites, has gathered a great deal of international support, and has shown that it is becoming increasingly necessary to address word-of-mouth transmission of information in the tourism industry.

Furthermore, a study has found that word-of-mouth reviews are the factor that most influences the selection of accommodations in both business travel and leisure travel (USA SAS Institute study).