On April 27, 2026, JTB, Japan’s largest travel group, officially launched the second-phase global supplier tender for the 2026 “Chinese Solar Terms Study Tour Program.” This event is directly related to such niche fields as the overseas expansion of Chinese cultural and tourism study tour products, cross-border education services, the development of intangible cultural heritage experiences, and low-carbon tourism practices, marking that the Japanese market’s procurement standards for China-themed study tour products are rapidly evolving toward deeper content, standardized delivery, and quantifiable sustainability.

Event Overview

Japan’s JTB Group opened the second-phase global tender for the “Chinese Solar Terms Study Tour Program” on April 27, 2026. The tender documents clearly list the “In-Depth Experience Module of the Luoyang Peony Cultural Festival” as a mandatory component with the highest weighting (35%) in the technical evaluation, and require bidders to provide bilingual course manuals, scheduling plans for intangible cultural heritage workshops, and carbon footprint assessment reports. This tender is open to global suppliers, and its results will directly affect the procurement decisions and delivery expectations of Japanese primary and secondary schools, education-related non-profit organizations (NPOs), and family travel distributors regarding China study tour products.

Which Sub-Sectors Will Be Affected

Study Tour Product Design and Content Development Companies

As the tender sets the “In-Depth Experience Module of the Luoyang Peony Cultural Festival” as the highest-weighted item in the technical evaluation, content development companies need to systematically restructure their curricula around festival culture, regional IP, and educational objectives. The impact is reflected in the following: course structures must align with the cognitive logic of Japan’s K-12 education system; intangible cultural heritage workshops must have verifiable inheritor qualifications and bilingual teaching capabilities; and all content outputs must simultaneously meet the dual standards of native Chinese expression and Japanese educational adaptation.

Cultural and Tourism Receptive Services and Local Service Providers

Destination management companies, scenic area operators, and intangible cultural heritage workshop operators in Luoyang and the Henan region will be directly affected by procurement-chain pressure transmission. The impact is mainly reflected in the following: service response cycles need to be compressed to the standard pace of international tenders (usually 6–8 weeks); providers need to independently or jointly provide carbon footprint assessment reports, which poses a practical barrier for service providers that have not yet established environmental data collection mechanisms; and the ownership, update mechanisms, and intellectual property compliance of bilingual course manuals will become key points in contract negotiations.

Cross-Border Education Services and B2B Distribution Platforms

Distributors of Chinese study tour products for the Japanese market, education NPO cooperation platforms, and Sino-Japanese bilingual education consulting institutions will face upgraded procurement standards. The impact is reflected in the following: the existing “itinerary + explanation” model will be difficult to pass technical evaluation; there is a need to get involved earlier in the curriculum development stage rather than only undertaking sales or coordination functions; and carbon footprint reports will become a new market-entry threshold, forcing platforms to integrate third-party ESG service resources.

Low-Carbon Tourism Services and Certification Support Institutions

Service institutions specializing in tourism carbon accounting, green event certification, and sustainable travel management are seeing structural opportunities. The impact is reflected in the following: a single carbon emission estimate no longer meets the requirements, and coverage must extend across the full chain of transportation connections, workshop materials, accommodation energy consumption, and paper-based materials; reports must comply with Japanese JIS or ISO 14067 standards and support delivery in Japanese; and currently, domestic institutions capable of issuing bilingual Chinese-Japanese carbon reports are extremely limited.

What Relevant Companies or Practitioners Should Focus On and How They Should Respond at Present

Pay Attention to the “Detailed Technical Evaluation Rules” and the “Supplier Performance White Paper” to Be Released Subsequently by JTB

The tender announcement only specifies the weighting and basic requirements, while the specific scoring dimensions (such as the language proficiency standards for bilingual manuals, the minimum proportion of class hours for intangible cultural heritage workshops, and the data granularity of carbon footprint reports) have not yet been disclosed. Relevant companies should complete continuous tracking of the public documents on JTB’s official website before mid-May 2026, so as to avoid overinvesting based on the current simplified requirements.

Focus on Building Capabilities for Three Types of Deliverable Assets in the “Luoyang Peony Festival” Module

What deserves more immediate attention at present is: bilingual course manuals (which must include three parts: teaching objectives, student activity handbook, and teacher guidance pages), intangible cultural heritage workshop scheduling (which must specify inheritor qualification numbers, maximum capacity per session, and safety emergency plans), and carbon footprint assessment reports (which must list accounting boundaries, emission factor sources, and third-party review statements). None of these three can be missing, and they must form a closed-loop evidence chain.

Distinguish Between Policy Signals and the Pace of Business Implementation

This tender is an annual procurement action rather than a long-term framework agreement. From an analytical perspective, the core signal it sends is that mainstream Japanese channels are turning “cultural depth” and “sustainability” from bonus items into rigid thresholds. However, the actual execution cycle for 2026 is relatively short (groups are expected to start in September 2026), so companies do not need to immediately launch system-wide transformation, but should prioritize completing lightweight compliant packaging of the Luoyang module for this year’s tender response.

Coordinate in Advance with Local Cultural and Tourism Authorities and University Research Teams

Carbon footprint assessment and the standardization of intangible cultural heritage courses involve cross-departmental collaboration. Observation shows that institutions such as the Luoyang Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism and the Solar Terms Culture Research Center of Henan University of Science and Technology have already participated in early-stage plan discussions. Companies may proactively connect with them to obtain local endorsement materials, share foundational carbon databases, and jointly apply for supporting assistance under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s “Overseas Promotion Special Program,” thereby reducing the risk of isolated investment.

Editorial Viewpoint / Industry Observation

From an industry perspective, this tender should not be simply understood as a routine procurement move, but rather as a critical signal of a standards upgrade: for the first time, it gives the highest weighting within the same evaluation system to both a Chinese regional festival IP (the Luoyang Peony Festival) and a globally accepted sustainable development indicator (carbon footprint). At present, it is more appropriate to understand this as mainstream Japanese channels replacing “generalized Oriental imagination” with “verifiable cultural value” as the primary benchmark for screening Chinese study tour products. What the industry needs to keep watching is not the one-off winning result, but whether this standard will expand in 2027 to other solar term modules such as Qingming and Mangzhong, and whether peers such as Hankyu Travel and Kinki Nippon Tourist will follow suit in adopting it.

Conclusion

The industry significance of this tender event lies in the fact that it objectively promotes the evolution of Chinese cultural and tourism study tour services from being “resource-oriented” to being “standards-oriented.” At present, it is more appropriate to understand it as the starting point of an emerging shift in procurement models, rather than a completed shaping of the market landscape. Relevant companies should adopt a strategy of “modular response, evidence chain first, and reserved standard interfaces,” avoiding large-scale repeated investment and focusing instead on building foundational delivery capabilities that are reusable, verifiable, and scalable.

Information Source Notes

Main source: the “2026 Second-Phase Global Tender Announcement for the 2026 Chinese Solar Terms Study Tour Program” (public version) published on JTB Group’s official website on April 27, 2026. Items pending continued observation: the “Detailed Implementation Rules for Technical Evaluation” that JTB plans to release before May 15, 2026, and the list of first-phase winning bidders.