Using large-scale market survey data from 1989 and 1995, the authors examine the distinguishing characteristics of Japanese package tourists in comparison to nonpackage tourists. While there is a decline in package tourism for Japanese overseas tourists, there are many attributes of the package tourist that suggest the continuing demand for this form of travel.

In the past few years, a number of new studies have published high-tech rankings of American metropolitan areas that are used by many business consultants and local economic development organizations to advise firms on location strategies. In this article, the authors generate their own rankings based on an occupational definition of “high techness” and compare them with those of four other studies. The results rank larger and older industrial cities, such as Chicago, New York, and even Detroit, higher than many of the smaller places celebrated as high tech, such as Austin. The work demonstrates that the methodology underlying rankings is crucially important to the outcome. By abandoning narrow notions of high tech restricted to maturing technologies in computers, electronics, and telecommunications and instead using science and technology (S&T) occupations as a marker for high tech, it may be possible to tag the innovative potential of emerging sectors, including high-tech services.

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This article examines contemporary Japanese overseas tourism from a supplier-side perspective using the concept of production systems. We first outline characteristics of the evolving structure of Japanese overseas tourism, with an emphasis on the global spread of Japanese travel companies. This provides a frame for presenting an empirical account of the transactional relationships in the Japanese package tour production system in Whistler, British Columbia, where Japanese tour operators play a pivotal role. We conclude that the recent expansion of Japanese travel companies is fostering the functional integration of the global tourism production system and exhibits increasing reflexivity.

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