TOKYO, March 21, 2024—Japan’s target of drawing 60 million foreign tourists by 2030 may be advanced earlier as travelers flocked to popular destinations at a maddening pace in February 2024, totaling 2.788 million, a 7.1 percent rise over 2019, the year before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country, the Japanese government tourist agency JNTO reported March 19.
The number marked the largest single monthly figurer post-Covid and a record for any month of February. Especially surprising, travel agent officials said, was that travelers braved the coldest month of year. This suggested that the March number is set to be even bigger, possibly breaching 3 million, they said.
By country, Korea totaled 818,500, up 14.3 percent over February 2019; Taiwan 592,200, up 25.6%; China 459,400, down 36.5%; Hong Kong 205,900, up 14.8%, and the United States 148,700, up 60.5%. The Philippines totaled 65,200, up 85.4%, Malaysia 60,200, up 64.2%, Vietnam 60,100, up 52.6% – all of them record highs.
Compared with February 2023, Korean visitors registered a 43.9 percent increase; China 1,166 percent; Taiwan 102 percent; Hong Kong 72.4 percent; the United States 71.0 percent. There was no country that showed year-on-year decrease.
In March and April, numbers are projected to increase 10-20 percent, driving the 2024 total set to easily topping 30 million.
A Brooklyn, New York resident told The Prospect that ‘many’ of his friends are booking to visit Japan this spring onward for a few weeks of visit, and a journalist based in San Francisco said he and his wife plan traveling Tokyo, Mt. Fuji, Hakone, Kyoto, Osaka areas for about two weeks. They reserved the Imperial and other top hotels, as well as luxury restaurants.
Floods of visitors already are a nightmare for Kyoto residents as their rents are soaring through the roof in response to gluts of foreign investments in the city’s properties. Public transportation, including buses, are packed with suitcase-carrying tourists, inconveniencing locals to get around for shopping and other errands, Kyoto residents complained, on top of spiraling prices of everything.
Kyoto now is mulling two-tier prices, one for locals and other for out-of-towners.
The ‘tourist pollution’ caused by over-tourism is threatening to spill over to other places, such as snow-covered Gokayama in Gifu Prefecture and Morioka in northern Japan. They are booking ‘business hotels,’ which are cheap accommodations for Japanese workers on assignment. Their travel expenses are limited and most opt to stay at those hotels giving them a tiny space for a bed to sleep for $40-50. Now, prices are set to double, going beyond their stipend. City hotel rates already have more than doubled and their restaurants also doubled prices compared with two years ago. Service prices as a whole have climbed at least 100 percent over two years ago.
In 2025, Osaka will host the Osaka Expo 2025, with the organizers projecting to attract 3.5 million foreign visitors.
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