Japan Bound

The number of international visitors to Japan in June 2024 reached record-high 3,135,600 on a single month basis, increasing by 8.9% compared to the same month of 2019. The total for the first half of 2024 was up 6.9% to record-high 17,777,200.

The Japanese government focuses on sending inbound tourists to local areas and avoiding over-tourism, forecasting record-high 35 million international visitors and also record-high travel spending of 8 trillion yen in 2024.

Japan Brand Survey 2024 by Dentsu finds that Japan is the top revisiting destination by far, about 20 higher points than Singapore as the 2nd and U.S. as the 3rd. The most-expected experience in Japan is ‘a variety of foods’

Haneda Airport has launched ‘Haneda Airport Duty-free Booking Station,’ which is a new service for Chinese travelers to book duty-free items on a WeChat mini program.

Kyoto City encourages inbound travelers visiting Kyoto City to use ‘Oyraa,’ an interpretation app, to avoid troubles in traveling in advance and as one of the over-tourism countermeasures.

The MICHELIN Guide announced the first 108 MICHELIN Key hotels and ryokan, six Three Key hotels and ryokans, 17 Two Key and 85 One Key, out of 243 MICHELIN Guide Hotel Selections (as of July 1 2024).

NAVITIME JAPAN, a Japanese navigation app provider, announced regions with more inbound travelers’ visits in the spring 2024, based on data from ‘Japan Travel by NAVITIME.’ The largest growth was seen in Minami Ashigara City.

E-ticket booking platform Linktivity has begun selling QR code-based digital tickets of private railways in Kansai and Kanto areas through partnerships with more than 400 OTAs worldwide.

Yamanashi Prefecture and Shizuoka Prefecture, the gateway of Mt.Fuji, will launch management systems to control climbers on July 1 2024, expecting the regulations will be a model case to solve over-tourism.

The number of international visitors to Japan in May 2024 was up 9.6% to record-high 3,040,100 for May compared to the same month of 2019. The largest source market was South Korea with 738,800 visitors.

‘Tourism EXPO Japan 2025’ will be held in Aichi Sky Expo in Aichi Prefecture for the first time, appealing Chubu and Hokuriku areas. Tourism EXPO Japan 2024 will open in Tokyo Big Sight on September 26 2024.

78% of all DMOs or prefectures in Japan target Taiwan as a source market, followed by Australia (51.4%) and U.S. (49.7%), ‘because tourism resources and contents are compatible with the target markets (64.4%).'

The total number of guest nights in April 2024 (provisionally) was up 11.9% year on year to 50.9 million, which were also up 0.5% compared to the same month of 2019, and guest nights of foreigner travelers were up 16.5% to 13.2 million.

NTT Broadband Platform (NTTBP) has begun providing ‘Japan Wi-Fi Funalytics,’ a new service to visualize and analyze inbound travelers’ movements with data from free Wi-Fi access app.

Tokyo Shibuya Ward and Honolulu of Hawaii signed a sister city agreement to work together for sharing knowledge and experiences in tourism, eduction, sports and environment.

Kiraku, a Japanese accommodation developer, revealed that a joint venture with Hyatt Hotels Corporation will open luxury ryokan ‘ATONA’ in 2026.

Leaders of Japan, China and South Korea agreed to increase exchange of people among the tree nations to 40 million by 2030, designating ‘Culture Exchange Years’ for the next two years.

More than 90% of visitors from Taiwan and Hong Kong want to buy foods as dinner in department stores or supermarkets in traveling in Japan.

Yamanashi Prefecture will introduce a pre-booking program to collect admission fees from climbers to Mt.Fuji on July 1 2024. The prefecture placed a gate in the Mt. Fuji fifth entrance station to collect admission fees this year.

Trip.com received more travel bookings from mainland China to Japan in the first quarter of 2024 than the same period of 2019, and bookings in local areas of Japan have increased.