OSAKA –
The 2025 Osaka Expo has boosted earnings at major railroad operators in western Japan, with Osaka Metro and West Japan Railway, or JR West, set to pay special bonuses to their employees.
Four out of six major railroads in the Kansai region have raised their net profit projections for the fiscal year ending next March.
Osaka Metro decided to pay extraordinary bonuses of up to ¥200,000 per employee after seeing the number of passengers top 40 million at Yumeshima Station, the nearest station to the expo.
JR West will pay up to ¥120,000 for not only a passenger surge but also robust sales of authorized expo goods led by the popularity of “Myaku-Myaku,” the official mascot for the exhibition held on the artificial island of Yumeshima in Osaka Bay.
“The hotel room occupancy rate (during the expo) was higher than expected,” said Masaya Ueno, executive vice president of Keihan Holdings. “Hotels in Osaka, in particular, had been packed,” Ueno noted. The railroad group’s leisure and service businesses logged an 82% year-on-year rise in operating profit between April and September.
Meanwhile, Kintetsu Group Holdings, whose railroad network extends beyond the Kansai region to Aichi Prefecture, failed to fully benefit from the expo as its efforts to lure expo visitors to tourist sites along Kintetsu Railway lines in Nara and Mie Prefectures, both east of the city of Osaka, did not bear fruit as intended.
Despite video advertisements to promote those sites on Osaka Metro trains, “passengers bound for (Mie’s) Shima region were fewer than anticipated,” said Kintetsu Group Managing Executive Officer Hiroyuki Kasamatsu.
AloJapan.com