About us

About Tongari Road Wide-area Cooperation Council

Tongari Road Wide-area Cooperation Council is a council that promotes wide area tourism in the “Tongari Road” area of ​​Hokkaido, which is organized by four towns: Urakawa Town, Samani Town, Erimo Town, and Hiroo Town.
With the decline of the local population threatening the future survival of the region, we are aiming to establish a sustainable development of the local economy from a perspective of “sightseeing.” In order to increase the flow of tourists, it is important to remove the walls of existing administrative districts. Also, combining all 4 towns enables us to provide more places to see and make it into a comprehensive “area” to make this region more appealing to tourists.
Having the magnificent Pacific Ocean and the Hidaka Mountains, which is known as the backbone of Hokkaido, The “Tongari Road” area offers unique and abundant food resources brought about by nature. In order for more tourists to visit this area and become a prosperous area, the Tongari Road Wide-area Cooperation Council will endeavor to further refine attractive local resources, improve its ability to disseminate, and promote tourism through wide-area cooperation.

【What is Tongari Road?】

It is a triangular area with Cape Erimo (Erimo Town) at the top, Hiroo Town in the east, and Samani Town and Urakawa Town in the west. It is the core region of ​​”the Hidaka Sanmyaku-Erimo Quasi-national Park”, which consists of the 3 popular spots, the Hidaka Mountains, the coastline around the Golden Road, and the Mt. Apoi Geopark. The Mt. Apoi Geopark is certified as a UNESCO Global Geopark.

【Activities】

The three pillars of our tourism policy are human resource development, utilization of local resources, and tourism PR.
From 2015 to 2018, our project was selected as a Hokkaido’s subsidy project, “Municipal Cooperation Model Project”, and we are working to expand and advance the wide-area cooperation.

（１）Human Resource Development

• Mutual complementation by local governments
• Raising awareness of tourism-related businesses
• Fostering the spirit of regional revitalization through tourism

Planning and implementation of workshops to establish tourism town development, foreigner acceptance training, and cross-industry exchange, providing regional resource utilization workshops, and implementing wide-area DMO advanced site visits.

（２）Utilization of Local Resources

• Convert diverse local resources into tourism resources
• Development of special local products
• Branding the abundance of “Nature” and “Food”

Development of sparkling wine using a local produce (summer strawberries), creation of experience programs, holding workshops for new product development, and production of a brand book.

（３）Tourism PR

• Raise the awareness of the Tongari Road area
• Identifying market needs
• Appealing to the target

Tourism product exhibitions in Sapporo and the Tokyo metropolitan area, restaurant tie-ups, production of wide-area tourism PR videos, submissions to overseas media, overseas promotions (Thailand, Taiwan), tourism marketing surveys, production of the website “Travel around the Tongari Road”.