*Rakuten Travel gets off to a good start on selling international flight tickets

Rakuten Travel (http://www.mytrip.net/), the Japan's leading online travel agent, has started booking and selling international flight tickets since January 27 this year. Rakuten Travel Chairman Hiroshi Mikitani revealed at an opening party inviting airlines, hotels and media, "For the first month, we enjoyed three times more sales than we had expected. I expect that the online travel agent will outgrow real travel agents. We will make efforts to form a big travel service for more than 28 million Rakuten members." About the next business step, Rakuten Travel President Yoshihisa Yamada said, "We hope to start selling dynamic packages combining hotels with air tickets within this year."

This Week Headline
*Rakuten Travel gets off to a good start on selling international flight tickets
+Mikitani says Rakuten Travel will surpass JTB in booking hotels several years later
*Japanese departures increased by 11% to 1.4 million for February
*Japanese cruise travelers grew particularly in Caribbean and Asia
*Narita partially restricts the operations on the second runway3
*The Haneda new runway project is awarded to a JV at 598.5 billion yen
*CSN is ambitious to expand its flight network to Japan
*Oneworld launches a new Japanese website for more commitment to the market
*International passengers were largely up for a calendar year of 2004
*Kansai international flight passengers grew by 15% for February