Musubi's Megumi Masuda Presents at APTA 2026 International Conference — Fukuoka Report

In July 2026, Musubi’s founder and CEO Megumi Masuda took the podium at the APTA (Asia Pacific Tourism Association) international conference held in Fukuoka, Japan.

Approximately 250 participants from around the world gathered for the three-day conference, — nearly all of them university professors and researchers Only a handful of private-sector practitioners from Japan were among the presenters.
Masuda — Nationally licensed guide-interpreter (Japanese national qualification) who has spentover 20 years designing and deliveringmore than 1,000 tours — sdistilled two decades of fieldwork into an academic paper and brought it to the podium.

What Is APTA?

APTA is one of the leading international conferences for tourism research inthe Asia-Pacific region.
A presentationrequires a peer-reviewed paper approval — this is not a stage anyone can simply walk onto.
With the audience drawn overwhelmingly from universities and research institutions, a presentation from a private company is a genuine rarity.

The Presentation

Titled "From Experience to Stewardship," Masuda's presentation drew on more than 20 years in the field to define the structural conditions required to pass regional culture on to the next generation (paper title: Guideability As A Structural Condition For Cultural Succession In Tourism).

Given fifteen minutes, she refined her script down to the wire — then, on stage, spoke largely in her own words, folding in improvisations drawn straight from experience.

Among a lineup of academic papers, her practitioner's voice stood apart.

Guideability
Why "the Guide Problem" Matters

Masuda opened with a structural issue at the heart of Japan's inbound tourism.

A 2024 survey by the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) found that roughly 90% of Japan's DMCs (Destination Management Companies) had turned down requests from high-value international travellers — most often because they simply could not arrange the right guide.

But Masuda doesn't see this as a shortage of people.
The real issue, she argues, is that three roles — the guide, the local custodians of culture (artisans, brewers, and others), and the regional DMC — lack the structure to work as one. She calls this missing structural condition Guideability.

To illustrate it, she presented a case study from Koga City, Ibaraki Prefecture: a FAM (familiarisation) trip to a local sake brewery and a traditional kimono-making (wasai) school. Here, guide, custodians, and DMC each played a defined role within a designed structure.
Visitors weren't received as temporary guests passing through — they were welcomed into the community from the inside, an approach Masuda calls Inclusion.
This design philosophy is what gave the experience its depth.

The Morning the Balloon Didn’t Fly

In her presentation, Masuda shared one particular story.

In February 2020, chief concierges from several five-star hotels in Tokyo visited Koga. The centrepiece of the day — a hot-air balloon flight — was cancelled due to heavy fog.

Masuda did not cancel the tour itself.
The concierges, after all, hadn'tcome to ride a balloon.
They had come to answer one question: Can I trust this town with the people in my care?

At the balloon base, a warm cup of coffee was already waiting — a small relief on a cold, foggy morning.
The team led the group to a spot overlooking the wetland, sharing the view the flight would have offered.
When Masuda learned that one of the guests was Dutch, she made a quick call and arranged an unplanned stop at the Koga History Museum, where Edo-period maps and artefacts tracethe town’s historical ties to the Netherlands.

None of this was in the plan.
It was possible only because Masuda had prepared many doors, ready to open, across the region.

Trust is not built in fair weather.
It is built on the days when something goes wrong.

Afterward, one chief concierge offered a simple assessment:

"Everything was in order."

Not the warmth of one host's hospitality — but a reproducible system.
A regional hosting structure that simply worked.

The Response
—"Let’s All Go to Koga"

As the presentation ended, the session moderator — a professor — said:

"Let’s all go to Koga."

The room responded with agreement.
In a room built for testing theories, participants were saying they wanted to go and see it for themselves — the moment Koga became, in the researchers' eyes, not a theory on a slide, but the field worth visiting.

The department head of a Hong Kong educational institution, presenting later in the same session on possible tourism built around China's 24 solar terms, pointed back to Masuda's talk: "this was exactly where "Guideability" could be put to work.
Research is one thing, but building real services and products takes local practitioners.
Working together is what matters.
" Masuda's presentation had set the tone for everything that followed.

After the conference, she went further, saying she had learned a great deal from Masuda's talk — and voicing interest in organising a study tour to Japan for her students.

The Practice Came Before the Policy

Masuda began putting the Guideability concept into practicein Koga between 2020 and 2021.
In 2021, the Japan Tourism Agency selected Musubi’s comprehensive Guideability model — including regional guide training — as the only case in the country in the field of high-value travel.

Japan did not formally define "high-value travel" as a policy category until the following year, 2022 — and Musubi's work in Koga was part of what shaped it.

What This Presentation Means

What Masuda brought to the conference was a design framework for cultural succession, distilled from over 20 years of field practice.

Guideability is both an academic concept and a practical framework that any region can put touse.
If a singleexceptional guide leaves, the doors to culture can close with them.
Guideability embeds that capacity across anentire region — so that culture can continue to be shared and passed on, independentof any one person.

High-value guide training that goes beyond language skills.
Concrete methods for building inbound hosting capacity.
A view of culture not as something to be consumed, but as something to be carried forward — Cultural Stewardship.
All of these are insights Masuda built in the field, now systematised into a design framework that can be shared with others.

Masuda closed her presentation with a single line:

"We don’t design visits.
We design inclusion."

If you are interested in collaborating on study tours, guide trainings, cultural programme design, or regional hosting capacity — we would be glad to hear from you.

Megumi Masuda
— Founder & CEO, Musubi Co., Ltd.

Nationally licensed guide-interpreter (Japanese national qualification) with over 20 years as a through-guide and travel company operator, and more than 1,000 tours designed and delivered.
Based in Koga City, Ibaraki Prefecture, working in long-standing partnerships with local artisans, brewers, and cultural custodians.

Developer of the original frameworks "Guideability" and "Local Inclusion Design," presented at the APTA 2026 international conference.
Specializes in regional hosting capacity, DMC development, and guide trainings.

A trusted partner directly sought out by concierges at Tokyo's luxury five-star hotels, Masuda is a true pioneer in redirecting high-value international tourism toward regional Japan.
From organizing and operating the Japanese tour for a prestigious British classic car rally to curating bespoke regional journeys, she has consistently bridged the gap between urban luxury travel and authentic local experiences.

APTA 2026 Presenter
Originator of Guideability
Relational Luxury Practitioner