Japan Tourism Agency announced on January 16 2019 that consumption in Japan by international visitors was up 2% year on year to record-high 4.5 trillion JPY in total in 2018. Despite the year-on-year growths for six years in a row, the result was far from the government goal of 8 trillion JPY in 2020.
By market, the top was China with 1.54 trillion JPY (a share of 34.1%), followed by South Korea with 584.2 billion JPY (13%), Taiwan with 583.9 billion JPY (13%), Hong Kong with 335.5 billion JPY (7.4%) and U.S.A. with 289 billion JPY (6.4%). The share of the above five markets totaled 73.9%.
Spending a traveler was down 0.9% to 153,000 JPY. The highest spending a traveler was found in Australia with 242,000 JPY, followed by Spain with 237,000 JPY and Italy with 224,000 JPY.
The table below shows spending by item by market:
The table below shows spending by item in total:
The most-spent item was still shopping with 1.6 trillion JPY in total, but the share reduced from 37.1% in 2017 to 34.7% in 2018. Spending were up for accommodation with 1.3 trillion JPY (a share of 29.3%) and for food/drink with 975.8 billion JPY (21.7%).
