Privacy Policy

For users in Europe, South Korea, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Australia, U.S.A, Canada, and Mexico, please check below.

This privacy policy governs the data processing of Japan National Tourism Organization (“we” or “Organization”). We are committed to protecting your privacy and the confidentiality of any personal information provided by you, in accordance with our obligations under applicable data protection laws. Please read this privacy policy carefully in its entirety.

The annexes for the jurisdictions where you are residing or located and our local offices that process your personal information are located shall be applicable. Our local office that processes your data includes, not only the local offices of the Organization that you contact, but also other local offices of the Organization with whom your personal information are shared, as explained in the “4. How We Share Your Personal Information” section. Thus, more than one annex may be applicable if you and the local offices of the Organization that process your personal information are residing or located in different jurisdictions.

In the event of any conflict between this English language privacy policy and its corresponding local language privacy policy, the terms in English shall prevail.

Please note that separate specific privacy policies, notices or terms and conditions may apply to you in certain jurisdictions, and this privacy policy does not replace or revise any such specific privacy policies, notices, or terms and conditions.

If there is any inconsistency between the provisions of the applicable jurisdiction or service-specific annexes or privacy policies, the annex or privacy policy that imposes stricter obligations shall prevail.

We are involved in a broad range of activities both domestically and worldwide, to encourage international tourists from all over the world to visit Japan. Our activities include:

1) Promotion of Japanese tourism; 2) Operation of the Tourist Information Center in Japan for international visitors; 3) Administration of Guide-interpreter examinations; 4) Publication of tourism statistics and market reports; and 5) Providing support for international conventions and incentive events.

We maintain a number of offices in key cities around the world, through which a wide range of tourism-related promotions are carried out. Each overseas office is responsible for promoting travel and tourism to Japan; one of the most important functions is to help the travel industry encourage their clients to visit Japan.

For other services, please refer to the jurisdiction-specific annex.

The personal information we collect are as below. * Name; * Telephone number; * E-mail address; * Postal address (home/office); and * Other categories of personal information necessary for the purposes specified in "3. How We Use Your Personal Information" section (If required under applicable law, we will notify you of the categories of such personal information separately.). Personal information may be collected by us directly from you, including, without limitation, through our websites (when you contact us, or when you fill in forms displayed on our websites), by e-mail correspondence, by postal mail or fax, or in person, or by use of cookies and other similar technologies. (For cookies and other similar technologies, please see here) .

As described in the "4. How We Share Your Personal Information" section, our offices may collect personal information from other offices.

We may also obtain personal information relating to you from a third party.

We may collect and process your personal information for the following purposes:

1) Marketing and Public Relations (PR) Activities;

We may collect and process your personal information for the purpose in question, which is required to provide our services, organize business events and contests, send information and communicate with the press, send the requested brochures/newsletters to data subjects, update the social networking pages and improve our online presence, reply to enquiries etc. Further detailed purposes are listed below:

・Processing of subscribers receiving publications/brochures and/or sending enquiries or forms for competition entries
・Processing of data of the users accessing our SNS pages and making general enquiries through our website
・Processing of personal information of the entrants to our campaign through website

Legal grounds to process your personal information may change, subject to specific laws and regulations, so please refer to the jurisdiction-specific annex.

2) Business Operations;

We may collect and process your personal information for the purpose in question, which is required to organize the familiarization/media trips and make all the necessary arrangements regarding travel and accommodation, organize e-learning programs, business events, seminars etc., maintain operational contact details, manage and evaluate our relationship with the business partners and communicate with them. Further detailed purposes are listed below:

・Processing of personal information of the event participants
・Processing of personal information of the respondents to questionnaires at events
・Processing of personal information of participants in Press trip and Familiarization trips to Japan
・Processing of personal information of the registrants for the online training (through our's website)
・Processing of business partners' personal information (and their employees')

In principle, you voluntarily provide your personal information to us, and you are not obligated to provide us with your personal information. However, if you refuse to provide or decide to withdraw your personal information, you may experience disadvantages, such as inability to use various services provided by us.

To the extent possible, we aim to minimize disclosure of your personal information to third parties.

However, we need to make certain disclosures from time to time. We may share your personal information with strategic partners, service providers, corporate affiliates and corporate business transactions, and our local offices.

We may need to transfer your personal information to third parties which may be located in countries outside of your own in the situations described in the "4. How We Share Your Personal Information" section. We will implement safeguards to protect your personal information, as required under applicable local data protection laws and regulations.

We will use reasonable physical, electronic, and procedural measures to safeguard personal information within our organization against loss, theft, and unauthorized use, disclosure, or modification.

Any personal information held by or on our behalf is stored on secure servers, with modern security measures in place to protect against the loss, unauthorized access or alteration, or misuse of such information. Where such personal information is held by unrelated third parties on our behalf, we have also imposed contractual obligations on such parties to ensure the confidentiality and security of such information.

However, while we will take all reasonable measures (as required by applicable law) to protect the integrity of such information, we cannot guarantee that loss, unauthorized access or alterations, or misuse will not occur.

It is in turn your duty to inform us promptly of any possible security breaches (including unauthorized access to your personal information through our websites).

We will periodically review the personal information held by us to ensure that is accurate and up to date. We will also retain your personal information only for so long as it is necessary to provide our services to you (subject to our internal policies on data retention, or applicable laws and regulations).

You have the right to withdraw your consent to the processing of your personal information in cases where consent is required by law to process your personal information. To withdraw your consent, please contact us using the contact details in the “12. Contact Us” section.

To the extent required by applicable law, you may have rights regarding your personal information, including, without limitation, rights of access, correction, and deletion, and the right to stop the use thereof. To assert your data subjects' rights, please contact us using the contact details in the “12. Contact Us” section.

We will process your requests above in accordance with applicable law and, where permitted by law, may charge an appropriate fee to cover the costs of responding to the request. Any request must include sufficient details to identify you. Upon receipt of your request, we may request for additional information from you (including proof of identity) in order to process your request. Please note that it may also take some time to process the application, although we aim to process all requests as soon as possible.

We may also use cookies and other similar technologies through our websites to maximize your user experience. Cookies are small text files placed on your computer's memory temporarily or placed on your hard drive by a web page server. By using cookies, our websites can provide you with faster service and a more personal experience, including behavioral targeting advertising. You can at any time set your web-browser to reject cookies, although this may hinder performance and negatively impact the user-friendliness of our websites. (For cookies and other similar technologies, please see here)

If you no longer want to receive direct marketing communications from us, you may opt out by following the instructions contained within each email sent by us for this purpose or by contacting us using the contact details in the “12. Contact Us” section. Please note that if you opt out from receiving direct marketing communications, we may still send you administrative messages, from which you cannot opt out.

Our websites may require you to provide personal information, such as when you contact us, or when you fill in forms displayed on our websites. Some functionality may allow you to use third party authentication tools that allow you to share feeds or post content to social media. Any information that is captured through the use of such functionality is governed by the relevant third party privacy policy and terms, not this privacy policy. Our websites may also contain links to other websites. We bear no responsibility for the privacy commitments of these websites, or any disclosures of personal information or other information submitted by you through those websites, or otherwise collected from you by those website operators. It is your duty to ensure that you are satisfied with the extent of your rights and obligations in relation to your personal information when dealing with such websites or their operators. We encourage you to review the privacy policies and any other terms and conditions of those sites.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or how we process your personal information, please contact us using the following contact details:

By Email: webmaster@jnto.go.jp

We may update this privacy policy from time to time, in accordance with our internal policies, technological developments, industry practices, or applicable laws and regulations. If we make any changes to our privacy policy, we will post the revised version here, so do review it frequently. If significant changes are made, we may also notify you by other means, such as, but not limited to, a notification by email or on our website.