Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) recently announced that foreign visitors to Japan in the first half of 2015 (January to June) were up 46% or 2.88 million year on year to record-high 9.14 million.
The following table shows monthly results in the first half of 2015:
The top market was still China with increase of 116.3% to 2,178,600, which accounted for about 20% of the total. Following China, Korea was up 42.6% to 1,819,300, and Taiwan up 28.9% to 1,792,600. As a result, visitors from China, Korea, and Taiwan accounted for more than 60% of the total.
Record-breaking visitors in the first half were accomplished by China, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippine, Vietnam, India, Australia, U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
In June only, the monthly total reached 1,602,000 (+51.8%). The biggest market was China with 462,300, followed by Taiwan with 345,200 and Korea with 251,500. The growth rate of Korean visitors was lower than previous months due to a negative influence from MERS, however the number was finally record-high.
JNTO expects that foreign visitors will further increase in July, the busiest month in a year, potentially boosted by port calls of more than 40 cruise ships from East Asia.
In Japanese
