Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) reported that international visitors to Japan were up 19% year on year to 1,918,000 in September 2016, which were record-high for September. The total for the first nine months of 2016 was up 24.1% to 17,977,700.
The growth in September 2016 was mainly boosted by autumn holidays in Korea and China, school holidays in Malaysia, extension of air network to Asia and more visits of than 70 cruise ships primarily from China, according to JNTO.
The top market was still China with 522,300 visitors (+6.3%) and 5,007,200 visitors in total for the first nine months of 2016, which already exceeded the last year’s final result of 4.99 million. Visitors from Korea considerably increased by 40% or higher year on year. Except Russia, all of the following major markets resulted in record-high for September.
In October 2016, several negative factors, such as eruption of Aso Volcano, stronger yen trend, change of Chinese travelers’ shopping behaviors or voluntary stop of traveling by Thai people after the King died, may influence the inbound travel market, even though an autumn leaves season is coming.
In Japanese
