Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) announced that foreign visitors to Japan increased by 63.8% year on year to 1,817,000 in August 2015, remarkably 708,000 more visitors than the previous record-high 1.11 million for August last year. The total for the first eight months of 2015 was up 49.1% to 12,875,400.
The top market was still China with 591,500 visitors (+133.1%), followed by Korea with 391,000 visitors (+55.5%) and Taiwan with 313,900 visitors (+36.6%). Visitors from the top three markets accounted for more than 70% of the total.
Visitors from China reached 2,756,000 for the first seven months of 2015, which already exceeded the annual result of 2,409,000 in 2014. Also, visitors from Hong Kong reached 991,800 for the first eight months of 2015, which were already more than the annual result of 926,000 in 2014.
Russia was only the market with fewer visitors to Japan in August 2015 than a year earlier, reducing those by 10.3% to 4,800.
JNTO analyzed that the increase in inbound travelers mainly resulted from extension of the air networks, increase in port calls of cruise ships, increase in Korean travelers after MERS ended, ease of the visa rules for several nations and weak yen.
In Japanese
