Visitors to Japan top 2 million in June
Inbound visitors rose to 2.07 million in June, the Japan National Tourism Organisation (JNTO) said , clearing the 2 million mark for the first time since February 2020.
Even with a record heat wave in Japan, travellers are pouring in, taking advantage of a slide in the currency that has made holidays the cheapest in decades.
The influx is helping stir demand-driven inflation in the world’s third-largest economy, as hotels, restaurants, and retailers find they can charge more without denting sales.
Tourism to Japan all but halted for more than two years during the pandemic. But numbers have risen steadily since the government resumed visa-free travel for many countries in October and scrapped remaining COVID controls on May 8.For the first six months of the year, 10.7 million tourists arrived, the JNTO said.
Japan saw a record 32 million visitors in 2019, before COVID, and while no one is expecting that this year, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is hoping a recovery in the industry will add 5 trillion yen a year to the economy.
The APA Hotel chain said bookings had returned to 2019 levels with demand especially high in tourist hot spots like Tokyo’s Shinjuku district.
June’s 2.07 million arrival tally was up from 1.9 million in May, though still down 28% from the level in June 2019.
Inbound travellers from the U.S., Europe, Australia, and the Middle East are already above 2019 levels, JNTO data showed. Visitors from China, previously Japan’s biggest source of tourists, surged 55% to 204,500 in June from the previous month, though still far below 2019 levels. – Reuters , July 25, 2023
