Japan visitors top 2 million in June for first time since Covid-19
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The slide in the Japanese yen has made holidays to the country the cheapest in decades.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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TOKYO – Visitors to Japan exceeded two million in June for the first time in more than three years, official data showed on Wednesday, drawn in by the weak yen and helping to foster a recovery in the pandemic-stricken retail sector.
The number of foreign visitors for business and leisure rose to 2.07 million in June, clearing the two million mark for the first time since February 2020, the Japan National Tourism Organisation (JNTO) said.
That was up from 1.9 million arrivals in May, but still down 28 per cent from the level in June 2019 before the coronavirus outbreak.
Even with a record heatwave in Japan,
The influx is helping to stir demand-driven inflation in the world’s third-largest economy, as hotels, restaurants and retailers find they can charge more without denting sales.
Economic boost
Tourism to Japan all but halted for more than two years during the pandemic. But numbers have risen steadily since the government allowed the resumption of visa-free travel for many countries in October and scrapped remaining Covid-19 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 the Covid-19 pandemic. While no one is expecting that this year, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is hoping a recovery in the industry will add 5 trillion yen (S$47.5 billion) 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.
Tokyo’s Haneda Airport restarted international flights from its Terminal 2 for the first time in three years on Thursday.
A Kyoto tourism group sold 400,000 yen premium tickets to the city’s famous Gion Festival this week, 20 times the previous high, according to media.
Inbound travellers from the United States, 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 per cent to 204,500 in June from the previous month, though still far below 2019 levels. REUTERS
