Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) reported that international visitors to Japan were up 23.9% year on year to 2,578,900 in April 2017. The result marked the first over 2.5 million a month and broke the previous monthly record of 2,296,500 in July 2016.
JNTO analyzed that growth of the Korean market affected the whole inbound travel market. Also, shift of the Easter break from late March last year to April this year and holiday periods in other countries were positive factors for the growth.
The table below shows change of international visitors to Japan for the past year
The top market was Korea with 554,600 visitors (+56.8%), outnumbering 528,800 Chinese visitors (+2.7%). Visitors from Hong Kong largely increased by 64.6% to 209,400 due to Easter holiday. Visitors from 13 markets (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippine, Vietnam, India, U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Germany and Russia) were record-high on a single month basis, and visitors from other seven markets (Korea, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Italy and Spain) were record-high for April.
