Welcome to Joy Travels Pvt. Ltd.

India based travel agent & tour operator, Joy Travels Pvt. Ltd. offers unparalleled tour packages which suits the budget traveler as well as the most luxurious holiday seeker. We are in the business since 1984 and reputed for our India Tour Itineraries, Outbound Travel & Tour Packages and also for Theme based Travel Itineraries.www.joy-travels.com

Japan Rail Pass

The Japan Rail Pass allows unlimited travel on the entire nationwide Japan Railway (JR) network, including the Shinkansen (bullet train), JR ferries, and JR buses.
Hokkaido has become easier to reach by train from Tokyo. A new bullet train service linking Morioka and Hachinohe on the JR Tohoku Shinkansen Line was launched on Dec. 1st, 2002. The new "Hayate" train departs from 7:30am, with 20 trains daily. It takes 2 hours 56 minutes from Tokyo to Hachinohe, and a further 3 hours by limited express train will get you to Hakodate. With the Japan Rail Pass, you can board "Hayate" without any surcharge. It is now more convenient than ever to visit Hokkaido by train.
There are two (2) kinds of Japan Rail Passes: Green and Ordinary. The Japan Rail Pass Green is valid in the superior class green cars without additional charges. 7-day, 14-day and 21-day passes are available at the following prices:

The Japan Rail Pass is available to:

1. Tourists visiting Japan from abroad under "temporary visitor" entry status.
2. Japanese nationals living in a foreign country,
a) as a permanent resident of that country, or
b) a resident in that country for ten (10) or more years, or
c) who is married to a citizen of that country. How to apply for a Japan Rail Pass:

1. Purchase an exchange order with an authorized agent BEFORE coming to Japan. (Japan Rail Pass cannot be purchased in Japan).
2. After arrival in Japan, go to the JR Information and Ticket Office at NaritaAirport, or to one of the JR Travel Service Centers, such as Tokyo Station. Exchange your exchange order for your Japan Rail Pass; when you fill out the pass application form, specify the first date on which you want to use the pass. Show your passport at the time of exchange.
3. The exchange order must be exchanged within three (3) months of the date of issue.

Conditions and Information:

1. A Japan Rail Pass is strictly personal and not transferable.
2. Always carry your passport and show it if requested.
3. Begin your travel within three (3) months of the date on issue of the exchange order.
4. The pass is valid for unlimited travel on the Shinkansen ("Kodama" and "Hikari" trains, not "Nozomi" trains), limited express, ordinary express and local trains on all JR lines. It is valid on local lines of JR bus companies (JR Bus Tohoku, JR Bus Kanto, JR Tokai Bus, West Japan JR Bus Company and Chugoku JR Bus Company) and bus divisions of the JR Hokkaido, JR Shikoku and JR Kyushu, and also on some of the JR highway bus lines on the express highways, as follows:
Morioka, Hirosaki and Aomori Tokyo to Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka and Tuskuba Center Nagoya to Kyoto and Osaka Osaka to Ochiai Interchange and Fukuchiyama The pass is also valid for basic fares on the JR ferry between Miyajima and Miyajimaguchi.
5. Seat reservations may be made in advance without additional payment; seat availability cannot be guaranteed otherwise. For reservations, you should apply to any Travel Service Center or the *Midori no madoguchi* (Green window) at a JR station.
6. If you hold a Japan Rail Pass Ordinary and you want to use a berth or green car seat, you must pay the regular berth or green car charge and the associated limited or ordinary express charge.
7. If you hold a Japan Rail Pass Green and you want to use a berth on a sleeping car train or private compartments on the Shinkansen or limited express "Superview Odoriko", you must pay the regular berth charge of the Green Private Compartment charge and the associated Shinkansen, limited express or ordinary express charge.

8. The pass cannot be reissued if lost or stolen.
9. The pass is refundable only if presented for cancellation at a Travel Service Center in a JR station designated to handle Japan Rail Passes BEFORE the stamped first day of use. Ten (10) percent of the yen price of the pass will be collected as a handling fee. No refund can be made on or after the stamped first day for any reason whatsoever

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Travel agency

A travel agency is a business that sells travel related products and services, particularly package tours, to end-user customers on behalf of third party travel suppliers, such as airlines, hotels, tour companies, and cruise lines. In addition to dealing with ordinary tourists, most travel agents have a special department devoted to travel arrangements for business travellers. Indeed, some agencies specialise in that work. Some agencies also serve as general service agents for foreign travel companies in different countries.

Airline

An airline provides air transport services for passengers or freight. Airlines lease or own their aircraft with which to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for reasons of mutual benefit.

Origins

The British company, Cox & Kings is sometimes said to be the oldest travel agent in the world, but this rests upon services that the original bank (established in 1758) supplied to its wealthy clients. However, the modern travel agent first appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century. Thomas Cook, in addition to developing the package tour, established a chain of agencies in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, in association with the Midland Railway. These not only sold their own tours to the public, but represented other tour companies. Other British pioneer agencies were Dean and Dawson, the Polytechnic Touring Association, and the Co-operative Wholesale Society.Travel agencies became more common place since the development of commercial aviation from the 1920s. Originally, the agencies largely catered to middle-class customers, but the post-war boom in mass-market package holidays resulted in travel agencies on the main streets of most British towns, catering for a working class clientèle looking for a cheap overseas beach holiday

Types of Agency

There are three different types of agencies: these are Multiples, Miniples and Independent Agencies. The former comprise a number of national chains, often owned by international conglomerates (Thomson Holidays is now a subsidiary of TUI, the German multinational). It is now quite common for the large mass-market tour companies to purchase a controlling interest in a chain of travel agencies, in order to control the distribution of their product. (This is an example of vertical integration.)The smaller chains are often based in particular regions or districts.Independent Agencies usually cater for a special or niche market. Some cater to the needs of residents in an upmarket commuter town or suburb, or concentrate upon a particular area or group (catering to the travel needs of Polish expatriates, perhaps), or an activity (servicing the needs of football supporters)

Operations

As the name implies, their main function is to act as an agent, that is to say selling travel products and services on behalf of a supplier. Consequently, unlike other retail businesses, they do not keep a stock in hand. A package holiday or a ticket is not purchased from a supplier unless a customer requests that purchase. The holiday or ticket is supplied to them at a discount. Thus, the agent's profit is the difference between the supplier's price and the price at which the product is advertised or sold to the customer. This profit is called the agency commission, and varies a great deal. In Britain, 12% would be considered a good commission.Other commercial operations are undertaken, especially by the larger chains. These can include the sale of in-house insurance, travel guides and timetables, car rental, and the services of an on-site bureau de change dealing in the most popular holiday currencies.The majority of travel agents have felt the need to protect themselves and their clients against the possibilities of commercial failure, either their own or a supplier. They will advertise the fact that they are bonded (posting a financial bond with an organisation). In the case of a failure, the customers are guaranteed either an equivalent holiday to that which they have lost, or (if they prefer) a refund. Many British agencies (and tour companies too) are bonded with IATA for those who issue their own tickets, ATOL for those who order tickets in, or ABTA for those who sell package holidays on behalf of a tour company.Of course, a travel agent is supposed to offer impartial travel advice to the customer. This function almost disappeared with the mass-market package holiday, and some agency chains seemed to develop a 'holiday supermarket' concept, in which customers chose their holiday from brochures on racks and then booked it from a counter. However, a variety of social and economic changes have now contrived to bring this aspect to the fore once more, particularly the advent of multiple no-frills airlines

Criticisms

Travel agencies have been accused of employing a number of restrictive practices, the chief of which is known as 'racking'. This is the practice of only displaying the brochures of those travel companies whose holidays they wish to sell, the ones that pay them the most commission. Of course, the average customer tends to think that these are the only holidays on offer, and are unaware of possible alternatives.Generally speaking, small or specialist tour companies do not sell their product through travel agents, since they could not afford to pay the rates of commission that would be demanded. There are a few exceptions to this rule. Independent agents might sell or take bookings for local tour companies (such as coach companies) or tour companies offering specialist holidays that fit into their target market.Consequently, even before the advent of the internet, small niche tour companies ignored travel agents and sold direct to their customers.

The Internet threat

With the advent of general public access to the internet, many airlines and other travel companies began to sell directly to passengers. As a consequence, airlines no longer needed to pay the commissions to travel agents on each ticket sold. Since 1997, travel agencies gradually became victims of disintermediation, the reduction in costs caused by removing layers from the package holiday distribution network.[1][2]Many travel agencies have developed an internet presence by posting a website, with detailed travel information. Full travel booking sites are often complex, and require the assistance of outside travel technology solutions providers such as Travelocity, Patheo and Open Fares. These companies use travel service distribution companies who operate Global Distribution Systems (GDS), such as Sabre Holdings, Amadeus and Worldspan, to provide up to the minute, detailed data on tens of thousands of flight, hotel, and car rental vacancies.Some online travel sites allow visitors to compare hotel and flight rates with multiple companies for free. They often allow visitors to sort the travel packages by amenities, price, and or proximity to a city or landmark.Travel agents have applied dynamic packaging tools to provide fully bonded (full financial protection) travel at prices equal to or lower than a member of the public can book online. As such, the agencies' financial assets are protected in addition to professional travel agency advice.All travel sites that sell hotels online work together with numerous outside travel agents. Once the travel site sells a hotel, one of the supplying travel agents is contacted and will try to get a confirmation for this hotel. Once confirmed or not, the customer is contacted with the result. This means, that booking a hotel on a travel website will not get you an instant answer. Only some of the hotels on a travel website can be confirmed instantly (which is normally marked as such on each site). As different travel websites work with different suppliers together, each site has different hotels that it can confirm instantly. Some examples of such online travel websites that sell hotel rooms are Expedia, Travelocity, Tripadvisor, Excelloz and Venere.