CASE STUDY
Tourism Design Rooted in Trust
Musubi’s work is not tourism strategy on paper.
We enter the field, build trust with local operators, and shape — in practice — the flow by which travellers are welcomed in.
CASE
01.
The Koga model:
a region’s “capacity to guide,” proven as structure
Since 2020, a grounded practice of high-value inbound travel in the region
CASE
01.
The Koga model:
a region’s “capacity to guide,”
proven as structure
Since 2020, a grounded practice of high-value inbound travel in the region
Since 2020, in Koga, Ibaraki, Musubi has built deep trust with the custodians of local culture, craft and livelihood — among them the 190-year-old Aoki Sake Brewery; “Kimono no Takumi,” a kimono-tailoring atelier whose master holds the Medal with Yellow Ribbon; and HARIO, whose works are made in Koga.
On that foundation, rather than relying on the knowledge or language of a single guide, we designed a structure in which city, prefecture and regional DMO, experience operators, interpreter-guides and the custodians of culture connect as one path of welcome — a region-wide capacity to guide.
This practice was selected, in the Japan Tourism Agency’s “Knowledge Compendium for Diversifying Visitor Attraction,” as the only case nationwide in the high-value-traveller field, and was set out as the philosophical foundation and practical theory of Ibaraki’s high-value inbound strategy. Today the thinking is practised in regions across Japan, from the capital region to the mountain villages.
Principal partners in practice
Aoki Sake Brewery
HARIO (Koga manufacturing facility; heat-resistant glass as the shared instrument linking the three local partners)
Kimono no Takumi (kimono tailoring; master, Medal with Yellow Ribbon)
Local century-old companies, craftspeople and custodians of culture
Aoki Sake Brewery
HARIO
Kimono no Takumi
CASE
02.
Value “as it truly is,” recognised by the world’s most exacting judges
Not a crafted experience, but the unembellished life of a place — and it was this that was valued
CASE
02.
Value “as it truly is,”
recognised by the world’s
most exacting judges
Not a crafted experience, but the unembellished life of a place — and it was this that was valued
In February 2020, Musubi invited the chief concierges of Japan’s leading five-star hotels (Les Clefs d’Or Japan) to Koga for a familiarisation tour.
The centrepiece — a dawn hot-air balloon — was cancelled in heavy fog. What we showed them instead was not spectacle, but the resolve to judge and act with safety first.
Trust is born not in fair weather, but in the midst of trouble.
What the concierges valued was not a crafted experience, but the unembellished life of the region itself.
That regard did not stay in words.
One of the chief concierges who joined the tour resolved to feature the Koga programme in her own hotel’s brochure (with the pandemic that followed soon after, the moment has been carried to a future occasion).
“Even in Ibaraki, even in Koga, it holds its own in the world” — that was the moment it was proven.
This regard stands as an emblem of the thought Musubi holds dear:
“We don’t design visits. We design inclusion.”
In a chief concierge’s words
“What was wonderful was not having a crafted experience imposed on us, but being able to live the unembellished work and life of the place.”
CASE
03.
Practice, made learnable by other regions —
training and development
Turning the welcome cultivated in Koga into a structure other regions can reproduce
CASE
03.
Practice, made learnable
by other regions —
training and development
Turning the welcome cultivated in Koga into a structure other regions can reproduce
At the request of municipalities and DMOs, Musubi has held training across the country for local operators and guides. From reception training for local experience operators to guide development in Tsukuba, Lake Biwa and the Shimanami Kaidō, we convey — fitted to each field — the reception of discerning travellers and the design of a capacity to guide.
The question we have met again and again in training is this: how can results that rest on one practitioner’s individual ability be made reproducible by others? It was this very question that became the starting point of Guideability — the rethinking of guiding not as individual talent, but as a structural condition belonging to the region.
Participants who arrive with almost no prior knowledge or experience of reception come to feel they can put it to use in their own field. Satisfaction of 100% for operator training and 81% for guide training (in each case “very satisfied” plus “satisfied”) reflects that response. Practice belongs to no single person; it opens into something that can be handed to a region.
Principal settings for training and development
Workshops for local operators (Shizuoka City and elsewhere)
Guide development in Tsukuba, Lake Biwa and the Shimanami Kaidō
Advisory for municipalities and DMOs