Haneda, Narita, Kumamoto and Naha join forces on a luggage-compression service for travellers
Four Japanese airport operators are jointly developing an automatic clothing-compression machine, after their own survey found seven in ten travellers had skipped a souvenir purchase for lack of suitcase room.
Japan Airport Terminal and the developer SJOY are jointly refining an automatic clothing-compression service called Pocket Tips, aiming to roll it out across Haneda, Narita, Kumamoto and Naha airports from next year, the four operators said in a joint announcement.
The machine compresses clothing — nothing else — into what the companies describe as palm-sized, in about a minute, shrinking garments to as little as a seventh of their original bulk depending on size. Because it compresses the clothes themselves rather than wrapping them, it produces no packaging waste, the release said.
The push follows a trial Japan Airport Terminal ran at Haneda in January 2026 through its terminal.0 HANEDA research hub, which the company said drew positive feedback on convenience along with suggestions for improvement. Kumamoto and Naha's airport operators were already trial partners through that same programme; Narita joins the development for the first time in this round, bringing in demand data from a major Tokyo-area international gateway.
The companies pointed to their own survey as the rationale: across roughly 400 respondents surveyed over the prior trials at the four airports, about 70 per cent said they had skipped buying extra souvenirs because there was no room left in their luggage. Japan Airport Terminal also cited new cabin-baggage guidelines that took effect on 1 April 2026, introduced to smooth boarding and keep flights on schedule, as adding pressure on travellers' carry-on space.
The commercial logic is straightforward: a machine that frees up suitcase space is, in effect, a lever on the airport's own retail till. If seven in ten travellers really are walking past souvenir counters because their bags are already full, then anything that buys back packing space converts directly into incremental spend on the shops the operators themselves run. Japan Airport Terminal and SJOY said they also see potential uses beyond airports, in hotels and apparel, once the service clears full commercial rollout, which they are targeting for 2027 onward.