Japan receives more than 2 million visitors for 3rd straight month in August

TOKYO - Japan welcomed more than two million visitors for a third straight month in August, recovering to more than 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels for the first time, official data showed on Wednesday.

The number of foreign visitors for business and leisure was 2.16 million last month, data from the Japan National Tourism Organisation (JNTO) showed.

Visitor arrivals improved to 85.6 per cent of the levels seen in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic led to travel curbs around the world.

The August numbers were down from a post-pandemic high of 2.32 million in July, but the recovery is continuing, aided by increases in international flights and a weak yen, which makes trips to Japan more affordable than they have been in decades.

The number of travellers from the United States, Europe, Australia and the Middle East is already above pre-pandemic levels, JNTO data showed.

That helps compensate for visitor numbers from China that are still far below 2019 levels.

There were 364,100 visitors from China in August, a 16 per cent increase over the previous month, benefiting from Beijing’s lifting of restrictions on group travel to Japan.

Chinese travellers made up about 30 per cent of all visitors and 40 per cent of all tourist spending in Japan in 2019.

The lifting of the ban on group travel “will be a big tailwind for inbound visitor spending”, said Sompo Institute Plus economist Masato Koike.

Doubts had simmered over the recovery in Chinese visitor numbers, after Japan’s release of treated wastewater from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant triggered fear and anger in China.

Beijing slapped a ban on Japanese seafood imports and there were social media calls for a boycott of Japan’s goods generally.

China’s post-pandemic economic recovery this year has also been weaker than expected.

Inbound tourism, counted as an export of services, has been a bright spot in Japan’s economic recovery as a weaker yen boosts the spending power of visitors from abroad.

Their outlays during the quarter through June recovered to 1.2 trillion yen (S$11 billion), or 95.1 per cent of the same period in 2019, before the pandemic. 

Spending was led by tourists from Taiwan, the US, China and South Korea, with Chinese outlays accounting for far less than before the pandemic, according to the Japan Tourism Agency.

The data also showed that spending per visitor exceeds pre-pandemic levels. 

In the second quarter of 2019, the yen traded around 110 to the US dollar on average, compared with the roughly 137 level seen this year – essentially creating a 25 per cent discount on everything in Japan for US dollar earners.

Similar moves have been seen against the euro, yuan and Korean won. 

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida aims for inbound spending to reach an annual 5 trillion yen as soon as possible.

That would exceed the record 4.8 trillion yen seen four years ago.

To increase tourist spending, Japan should focus on entertainment services, including local tours, theme parks, theatre and music, said Ms Naoko Kuga, a senior researcher at NLI Research Institute in a report last month.

Tourism to Japan nearly stopped for more than two years during the pandemic, but arrivals have risen steadily since the government resumed visa-free travel for many countries in October 2022 and scrapped remaining Covid-19 controls in May 2023.

Just over 15 million visitors have arrived in Japan in the first eight months of 2023, JNTO data showed, still far from the record of about 32 million in 2019.
REUTERS, BLOOMBERG