Welcome: Odigo Japan

***We are delighted to welcome Odigo Japan as the newest Corporate member of the BCCJ!**

Odigo is a trip planner fuelled by an online community seeking to share local knowledge, and make trip planning to Japan fun and easy. They aim to increase inbound tourism to Japan.

A message from Odigo Japan:

More often than not, when you live and work in Japan you become ‘the expert’ to your friends and family back home. You love Japan and you want to help plan a great trip for your visitors but it can be difficult. Odigo makes trip planning easy and fun: we provide a platform that includes off the beaten track places described in reviews provided by our online community, creates a map to help with your planning, and an itinerary to keep track of the spots you’ve chosen.

Our content is being built through a community of writers, experts, artists and photographers, sharing local knowledge about places and experiences they love. Finding those hidden gems can be tough in a country like Japan. Odigo can help you to visit your first ramen shop, teach you how to order, what to ask for, how to pay, and anything else you might need to know. All of this information is provided by our passionate Odigo community. To help build the content in Feburary 2015 we are launching an App for contributors to share their love of Japan.

Another great feature of Odigo is that you can add more than one traveller to help plan your trip, they can add or edit spots to your itinerary, and while you’re on holiday you can share your trip with friends and family back home by using the Odigo trip diary to share photos and reviews. If you join our community of experts when you’re back home, the trip that you’ve just been on can be shared back into Odigo for other people to use as the basis for their future trip to Japan, thus the community of travellers sharing their experience grows with each journey.

Odigo is a next generation trip planner and sharing platform backed by RedHorse Corporation, a Japanese equity firm with deep roots in business and travel, and founded by their CEO Takamasa Kawasaki, a young, Japanese entrepreneur. Kawasaki-San recently published a book about the power of diversity. As Japan prepares to host the world in the 2020 Olympics, it’s a good time to make changes and move toward diverse ideas, cultures, and an openness towards new people. Japan can celebrate what it is to be Japanese while becoming a global partner in the wider world. Odigo is a part of the diversity outreach that Kawasaki san is Championing.

The Odigo team are a creative and diverse group who work hard to provide the best experience and connections for visitors and explorers in Japan. Our community manager, Lauren Shannon, has over 17 years experience working with small businesses and running her own restaurants in Japan, she’s passionate about bringing people together and manages all our partner relationships.

Get in touch with us for more information [email protected] and get your invitation to try out the site  at www.odigo.travel