Ryokô Planner

Ryokô Planner makes planning a trip to Japan simple. Discover places you'll love, build your itinerary step by step, and access essential travel information in one app.

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How proposing in Japan led me to build a trip planner...

The problem

Planning a trip to Japan on your own can be overwhelming. You have to browse dozens of different tabs to decide which cities you want to go to, figure out how to get from one place to another, find places you want to see, choose where to stay, find information about travel formalities and Japanese culture...

This makes planning time-consuming and stressful. But it’s what independent travelers accept if they want a trip that fits them, not the same itinerary every tour operator sells.

This leads to another issue: tourism is highly concentrated around a few destinations such as Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, while many other parts of Japan are much less visited and really need more foreign tourists to thrive amid Japan's depopulation and rural exodus. In 2025, two thirds of foreign visitor nights were spent in only 8 prefectures (Japan counts 47 prefectures).

Why did I choose to build a solution?

Two years ago, I had to plan a trip to Kyushu with my girlfriend. I wanted to propose to her there. Although I already knew the region from a previous internship in Fukuoka, I spent three weeks, every evening, juggling with a ton of websites, maps, accommodations, blogs and vlogs to create an itinerary that would fit our needs. We had a great time (and she said YES!) but I thought: "Why is it still so complicated to plan a trip to Japan in 2024?". And I noticed I was not alone in this situation. There are entire forums and subreddits dedicated to people needing help to plan their trips, for example r/JapanTravelTips with more than 600k visits per week!

And this year, I wanted to provide a solution to this problem.

Ryokô Planner

Ryokô Planner aims to solve these problems. First, by providing a user-friendly way to plan a trip from the user's interests. The user gets suggested cities and activities they can add to their trip. They then can rearrange the different steps of their trip and arrange transportation between each step. Regions of Japan periodically get the spotlight on the home page, articles and on Ryokô Planner's social media channels. The user can also copy an existing itinerary to use it as a base for their trip. Secondly, Ryokô Planner offers premium tools to ease the trip preparation before departure and go stress-free :

  • The Ryokô Planner Guide has everything there is to know before departure.
  • A task checklist allows the user to not forget anything, and if they do, reminders are sent.
  • A train pass calculator. In Japan, there are train passes that allow you to take the train as much as you want for a period of time. These passes, that can be national or local, are quite expensive and complicated. It is quite time-consuming to find out if a pass is worth it for the legs of our trip. That is why the pass simulator takes all the trains you added to your trip and determines if a pass is advisable or not.

The long-term goal is to make Ryokô Planner a one-stop shop for organizing a trip from the first idea to departure.

To ensure Ryokô Planner is heading to this goal, users can leave in-app feedback about features they would like implemented and places they would like added in the app.

Business model

The app is free to download and the user can plan their trip for free. The monetization plan for Ryokô Planner is threefold :

  • A premium offer: the tools described above are sold as a one-time IAP.
  • Affiliation: Ryokô Planner contains affiliate links to travel services such as train tickets, eSIM and driving license translation. Accommodation is planned for the near future.
  • B2B partnerships: in the future, I would like to work with Japanese prefectures and municipalities to give travelers more visibility into their regions and encourage them to discover destinations outside the most visited areas. This will come later, once Ryokô has enough users to make these partnerships meaningful.

Ryokô Planner is still at the beginning of its journey, and the product and business model will continue to evolve based on what I learn from users.

Prizes I am targeting

Ryokô Planner is competing in the following prizes :

  • The Grand Prize
  • The RevenueCat Peace Prize
  • The #BuildInPublic Award
  • The Keep Them Coming Back OneSignal Award

Details for each are in Additional Details sections.

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