Japan Bound

Japan Tourism Agency requests several revisions in the duty-free rules to raise conveniences for inbound travelers and to reduce burdens on duty-free retailers, including abolition of the upper limit amount of 500,000 yen for consumable goods.

HIS, a Japan’s leading travel firm, and Atami City, a popular onsen destination, signed an agreement on inbound travel promotion. The first effort is that HIS Taiwan will send its local staff to Atami.

The number of international visitors to Japan in July 2024 reached record-high 3,292,500 on a single month basis, increasing by 10.1% compared to the same month of 2019, totaling record-high 21,069,900 for the first seven months of 2024.

JR East a Japanese railway operator., has started a pilot program ‘JR EAST Travel Concierge,’ to support travel planning for international visitors, using Google’s generative AI ‘Gemini’ and Google Cloud.

Foreigners’ guest nights in three major urban areas and in local areas was up 59.0% and 5.9% to 9.76 million guest nights and to 3.81 million guest nights respectively. The largest growth in comparison with May 2019 was seen in Ishikawa with 148.6% up.

EY Strategy and Consulting (EY Japan) has issued an insight report on over-tourism in Japan to introduce countermeasures taken in foreign countries and to reveal results of the survey on over-tourism.

Spending in Japan by international travelers in the second quarter of 2024 increased by 68.6% to 2,1 trillion yen compared to 2019. The highest average was seen in France with 417,536 yen per traveler.

Japan Tourism Agency has estimated that an economic impact boosted by international skiers and snowboarders was about 64.3 billion yen in 2023, recognizing that ski and snowboard are key tourism activities to increase local spending and extend stay days in local areas.

The number of international visitors to Japan in June 2024 reached record-high 3,135,600 on a single month basis, increasing by 8.9% compared to the same month of 2019. The total for the first half of 2024 was up 6.9% to record-high 17,777,200.

The Japanese government focuses on sending inbound tourists to local areas and avoiding over-tourism, forecasting record-high 35 million international visitors and also record-high travel spending of 8 trillion yen in 2024.

Japan Brand Survey 2024 by Dentsu finds that Japan is the top revisiting destination by far, about 20 higher points than Singapore as the 2nd and U.S. as the 3rd. The most-expected experience in Japan is ‘a variety of foods’

Haneda Airport has launched ‘Haneda Airport Duty-free Booking Station,’ which is a new service for Chinese travelers to book duty-free items on a WeChat mini program.

Kyoto City encourages inbound travelers visiting Kyoto City to use ‘Oyraa,’ an interpretation app, to avoid troubles in traveling in advance and as one of the over-tourism countermeasures.

The MICHELIN Guide announced the first 108 MICHELIN Key hotels and ryokan, six Three Key hotels and ryokans, 17 Two Key and 85 One Key, out of 243 MICHELIN Guide Hotel Selections (as of July 1 2024).

NAVITIME JAPAN, a Japanese navigation app provider, announced regions with more inbound travelers’ visits in the spring 2024, based on data from ‘Japan Travel by NAVITIME.’ The largest growth was seen in Minami Ashigara City.

E-ticket booking platform Linktivity has begun selling QR code-based digital tickets of private railways in Kansai and Kanto areas through partnerships with more than 400 OTAs worldwide.

Yamanashi Prefecture and Shizuoka Prefecture, the gateway of Mt.Fuji, will launch management systems to control climbers on July 1 2024, expecting the regulations will be a model case to solve over-tourism.

The number of international visitors to Japan in May 2024 was up 9.6% to record-high 3,040,100 for May compared to the same month of 2019. The largest source market was South Korea with 738,800 visitors.

‘Tourism EXPO Japan 2025’ will be held in Aichi Sky Expo in Aichi Prefecture for the first time, appealing Chubu and Hokuriku areas. Tourism EXPO Japan 2024 will open in Tokyo Big Sight on September 26 2024.

78% of all DMOs or prefectures in Japan target Taiwan as a source market, followed by Australia (51.4%) and U.S. (49.7%), ‘because tourism resources and contents are compatible with the target markets (64.4%).'