Amid rapid recovery of international visitors to Japan, several regions in Japan have suffered from concentration of tourists on particular places and times, bad influences on residents by manner violation and reduction in travelers’ satisfactions. They are looking for how they can keep a balance between tourism spending and sustainable local communities.
Travel Voice interviewed Kenji Hamamoto, Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) International Tourism Department Director about how Japan tries to overcome over-tourism, which is one of the crucial challenges worldwide.
Over-tourism is not ‘tourism pollution’
Hamamoto emphasized, “Over-tourism is sometimes described as ‘Kanko Kogai (tourism pollution in English) on media, but I believe it is wrong.”
“Some regions have been in trouble with over-crowded places or times, manner violation and reduce of travelers’ satisfactions. What tourists and local communities want to do is not sometimes harmonized,” he pointed out. “For countermeasures against over-tourism, we should clarify one issue accurately for better community creation, not regarding several issues as one word of ‘pollution.’ JTA continues working together with local communities for the efforts.”
オーバーツーリズム問題と日々向き合う観光庁の濱本氏
How Japan addressed over-tourism? And from now on?
JTA organized cross-ministries meetings to discuss effective countermeasures against over-tourism under the former prime minister Fumio Kishida’s leadership in the summer 2023. The ministry meeting for tourism-oriented nation promotion accepted a policy package for countermeasures against over-tourism in October 2023.
The policy package consists of three pillars of ‘countermeasures against excessive over-crowd of tourists and manner violation by them,’ ‘encouraging international tourists to visit local areas’ and ‘tourism promotions by working together with local communities.’
省庁横断会議の様子
Recently, a supplementary budget of 15.8 billion yen for FY2024 was approved for pre-prevention and restraint from over-tourism to support local communities’ efforts for environment development to receive international tourists, demand management, decentralization of demands, prevention and restraint from manner violation and tourism promotions together with local communities.
Pioneer model areas
Hamamoto referred to ‘pioneer model areas’ as one of the core projects for countermeasure against over-tourism. JTA has selected several ‘pioneer model areas,’ which solve over-tourism issues with innovative efforts, such as hand-free tourism in Kyoto City, decentralization of tourists with a digital map in Hakone, manner eduction programs in Shirakawago, reduction in burdens on environment with EV in Aso or development of new secondary transportations in Sado Island.
In addition, JTA recommends that local areas should acquire Japan Sustainable Tourism Standard for Destinations(JSTS-D) because solution of over-tourism is deeply relevant to creation of a sustainable tourism community.
JSTS-D comprises of ‘sustainable management,’ ‘social and economic sustainability,’ ‘cultural sustainability’ and ‘environmental sustainability.’ Hamamoto said, “Local areas do not need to acquire all of those at once, but try to meet requirements in what they can do first in accordance with their respective tourism visions.”
Forming a consolidated vision by a community is important
One of the requirements for pioneer model area project is that a local community must launch a conference to discuss concrete efforts by stakeholders including local tourism business providers.
“It is very important to form a consolidated vision through discussions among stakeholders. To overcome over-tourism challenges, unification as a team is required,’ Hamamoto said. “The conference is mainly a place to discuss over-tourism, but its also a place to discuss and share the future vision for sustainable tourism.”
Hamamoto added that JTA intends to build a cross-nation scheme from the pioneer model areas project in the first half of 2025.
When it comes to manner violation, one of the challenges is that usual manners for Japanese are not necessarily usual for foreigners. Thus, JTA creates and publishes posters and leaflets to explain manners to be kept and pictograms visualizing prohibited or recommended actions in five different languages.
観光庁の事業者向けサイトより
Hamamoto said, “It is essential for local communities to cure the over-tourism issues in front of them with ‘bandages’ first and then to do ‘improvement of their constitutions’ toward the future.”
