Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Dec 24/02) - In a tourism market still suffering from post-9/11 jitters and fears of a Middle East war, young people, especially young Japanese women, are keeping the market afloat.

More Japanese women than men travel north to check out the Northern Lights. Here, tourists Ayaka Murata, left, and Ayumi Naka stroll down 50th street. - Jennifer McPhee/NNSL photo

Ayaka Murata, 28, works as a teacher for foreign students in Nara province in Japan.

For her annual one-week winter holiday, she decided to come to Yellowknife with her friend Ayumi Naka, 36, an office worker for a building maintenance firm.

The two women are typical Japanese tourists, young, adventurous and female.

Murata explained: "Japan is still a man-dominated country. They have higher positions in companies and also more responsibilities. Also I heard that more and more women stay single so they have more time to have fun."

For Yellowknife tour companies, that translates into good business.

In the tourism world, women like Naka and Murata are classed as "office ladies," a target market which is broken into two groups for the purposes of study -- women age 20 to 30 and those age 30 to 40.

"They're the largest markets we have," says Bill Tait, president of Aurora World Corp. (formerly Raven Tours).

Tait's company hosts about 11,000 Japanese tourists -- about 65 per cent are women, and 50 per cent from the office lady category.

"Often the males in the group are saving up for their weddings, so (the women) have more disposable income, and they're sort of the new wave of adventure travellers in the last 10 years," Tait says.

Amid concerns about world security, seniors and group travellers have been the ones to cancel travel plans.

The young people such as office ladies have been providing stability to the tourism market by continuing to travel.

Aurora Village operations manager Mike Morin says 75 per cent of the 2,000 Japanese tourists his company will host this year will be women.

One of his Japanese guides tells him that the gender imbalance is due to the fact that Japanese women are more open-minded about adventure travel, and also more likely to have to time to learn English.