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DeepExperience wants travelers to see the Japan that sits beyond the familiar attractions of Tokyo and Kyoto. The tour operator offers more than 800 original experiences across the country, each shaped by local guides, regional stories, and a belief that travel should benefit the places people visit.
That concept is now reaching a much larger, international audience. In 2025, DeepExperience hosted four times as many guests as in 2024, and just three months into 2026, the company was already growing at three times the pace of the previous year.
For CEO Hiroya Sakagami, that growth is more than a commercial milestone. It is proof that travelers are looking for deeper ways to connect with Japanese culture, history, and regional communities. We spoke with Hiroya about the company’s growth and its aim to build a system that is sustainable for both travelers and local economies across Japan.
What inspired you to partner with GetYourGuide?
We felt we shared a very strong common starting point around customer experience and values. We didn't see GetYourGuide simply as a platform to list our products; we saw it as a partner that cared about the same things we do. The emphasis on reviews and the breadth of what both organizations offer felt like a natural match.
When you first joined, did you have any expectations, and were there any surprises?
We were looking forward to reaching an international audience, which had been one of our biggest challenges. What surprised us was how quickly and easily we were able to reach the travelers we were targeting.
Because GetYourGuide is fundamentally a customer-first platform, the guests who book through it arrive with high expectations, and that aligns perfectly with the type of traveler we want to reach. The biggest change has been our ability to reach a much larger audience. That simply wasn't possible before.
It's also the fastest transformation we've experienced as a company. We have our own website and use other OTA platforms as well, but GetYourGuide is by far the most prominent. We receive more bookings through GetYourGuide than through all other channels combined.
What is your biggest challenge today, and how has GetYourGuide helped?
Before joining, we struggled to know how to improve our products. The review system on GetYourGuide completely changed that. Having direct feedback from guests gives us a very clear picture of what is working and what isn’t. It has been an enormous help in refining our tours and experiences.
Can you give any specific examples of improvements you've made based on that feedback?
It was a combination of things. Being a predominantly Japanese team, we had to rethink how we communicated our tours internationally. That meant changing tour names and catchphrases to make them clearer for international travelers, simplifying our meeting point descriptions, and updating photography. What appeals to a local audience is often very different from what attracts international visitors. The GetYourGuide booking data provided the foundation to improve across all those areas.
What advice would you give to other organizations looking to grow through OTA partnerships?
We still feel like a small player in the wider GetYourGuide ecosystem, so we hesitate to be too prescriptive. But the single clearest advice we can offer is to use the data and take every piece of customer feedback seriously.
Listen to each voice, because every guest who trusts you with their time and money deserves that level of care. We believe GetYourGuide shares those same values, and it shows.
What nationalities are your guests typically, and have booking behaviors changed?
Our guests are primarily North Americans, followed by Australians, British, Germans, and French. In terms of booking behavior, we see a strong tendency for last-minute bookings, and often just a few days or a week before the experience. We actually design for that.
Many of our tours are a few hours long, and we've structured our availability and staffing so that guests who arrive in Japan and decide on the day, or the next day, can easily book and have a guide ready for them. GetYourGuide's platform makes that kind of flexibility work really well.
How does GetYourGuide fit into your broader marketing strategy?
GetYourGuide is our primary marketing channel. It's where we focus most of our energy in terms of product development and promotion. What joining GetYourGuide opened up for us was the channel reach. We had tried Google advertising before, but once we joined GetYourGuide, nothing else compared.
What is the best piece of customer feedback you've ever received?
Some guests have told us that their experience changed how they see the world. One that stands out involves a member of our staff who is a highly trained swordsman. He offers private, customized training sessions in a temple in the north of Osaka.
Within just a few hours, he builds a very deep connection with guests, and many of them have described it as a genuinely life-changing experience. He's become something of a legend within our company, and we affectionately call him our own samurai.
That tour consistently generates some of the most heartfelt and detailed reviews we receive.
What is your vision for the future?
We want people to experience Japan in its fullest sense, and not just the famous cities, but the deep countryside too. Our long-term goal is to eventually reach travelers from every country in the world. We feel very aligned with GetYourGuide on that ambition, and we're genuinely excited about what we can build together.
Key Takeaways
- Since partnering with GetYourGuide, DeepExperience grew its guest numbers fourfold in a single year. They are now on track to reach twelve times their 2024 volume, a transformation driven largely by access to international travelers they couldn't reach before.
- The review and data tools on GetYourGuide gave DeepExperience a clear, actionable picture of what to improve, leading to changes in tour names, photography, meeting point descriptions, and overall guest communication.
- Last-minute bookings are a deliberate strategy, not a limitation. DeepExperience designs its tours and staffing specifically around last-minute travelers who decide on experiences once they're already in Japan, and GetYourGuide's booking platform makes that model work seamlessly.
- Authentic, locally-rooted experiences are the core product. With 800 original tours across all of Japan and around 700 local guides, every experience is scouted in person and led by someone from the region, a depth of authenticity that sets them apart.
- DeepExperience chose GetYourGuide because they saw a genuine alignment around putting the customer first, and that common ground has proven just as important as the commercial benefits.
