Originally Posted by
c933103
I am searching for flight from Hokkaido, after quick search, if I am to fly from Taiwan to Hokkaido (HKD/CTS/AKJ), it would cost me 17000-19000NTD(round trip), while flying to other Japanese airports will only cost me 4000-13000NTD (only consider those airports with direct flights). Similarly, if I am flying from Hong Kong to Japan, round trip flight to CTS would cost near 5000HKD at least, while round trip ticket to almost all other airports in Japan with direct flight from Hong Kong can be obtained with less than 2000HKD.
Then, I think it might have to do with the distance, thus I went onto check the price to fly from Sakhalin (Russia) to Japan, which it turn out that flying to CTS will still cost more than to NRT despite less than half the distance.
And it's not related to the demand either as some carriers have to cut their TPE-HKD route frequency and swotch to smaller plane due to oversupply.
So why are flights to Hokkaido more expensive? Is it related to the cost to use those airports?
If you're looking in July, August, and September, that is peak travel season for Japanese tourists in Hokkaido and the ANA/JAL duopoly maxes out revenue accordingly. The Sapporo Snow Festival in February also drives prices up. If you don't mind going when it's cold and snowy, look at early to mid-December for the cheapest airfare and hotels. Prices start to fall October 1 as that is when the unofficial Hokkaido travel season ends.
Also, avoid Japanese holidays. Even one day off will drive airfares up.
It's also helpful to know HND-CTS is the busiest air route in the world and the Shinkansen isn't able to drive prices down because even with the tracks going all the way to Hakodate the Shinkansen just isn't fast enough to compete with the airlines to Sapporo. Hadodate airport does appear to be a little less expensive than CTS, though. Not sure if that's enough to make a difference from Taiwan.