Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) announced that international visitors to Japan in June 2016 increased by 23.9% year on year to 1,985,700, which were record-high for June. The total for the first half of 2016 was up 28.2% to 11,714,000, which resulted in the first over 10 million for the first half.
It is noteworthy that visitors from Korea were up 38.1%, remarkably improving from monthly reduction of 4.2% in May 2016 due to negative influences from the Kumamoto Earthquake.
The table below shows international visitor results by month:
The biggest international market was still China with 582,500 visitors (+26%), marking over 500,000 for three months in a row, followed by Taiwan with 397,800 (+15.2%) and Korea with 347,400 (+38.1%). Visitors from Taiwan, Hong Kong and U.S.A. were record-high on a single month basis, and visitors from all of major 17 markets except Russia were record-high for June. For the first half of 2016, Japan received 3,076,600 from China (+41.2%), 2,383,000 from Korea (+31.0%) and 2,155,800 from Taiwan (+20.3%).
The table below shows visitor results by market:
For July 2016, JNTO has forecasted positive trends, such as increases in visitors from Malaysia and Indonesia in the high season after Ramadan ended or more port calls of cruise ships from East Asia, despite global instabilities. Also, JNTO sees that part of negative influences from the Kumamoto Earthquake will remain.
In Japanese
