Four practitioners, one generation forward — yugyo wraps Kanazawa University's 'Regional Tourism Business' course

From April 20 through May 25, 2026, yugyo CEO Ryo Osera — also Specially-Appointed Associate Professor at Kanazawa University's Advanced Tourism Science Research Institute — led four sessions of "Regional Tourism Business," a practical course in the Faculty of Transdisciplinary Sciences. Thirty-five students worked through the theme "Building new tourism ventures from the Hokuriku region."

The guest lineup brought four sector leaders to the lectern: Raisa Nishitani (Inbound and Outbound Tohoku), Tomotsugu Yamakawa (Coraré Artisan Japan, founder of Bed and Craft), Shun Ito (Reelu), and Naoya Shimizu (TABIPPO). Together they covered place-anchored tourism, distributed hospitality, the matching economy of guides and operators, and what "real experience" means to young travelers in the AI era.

In the final session on May 25, seven student groups pitched fictional companies — pain definition, TAM/SAM/SOM, unit economics — and were graded on the rigor of each. The next generation of tourism innovators is taking shape from Hokuriku.