With the weak yen serving as a tailwind, inbound consumption by foreign visitors to Japan is trending strongly.
According to the Japan Tourism Agency, spending in 2024 through September reached ¥5.8582 trillion JPY ($38.5 billion USD). That surpasses 2023's record high.
In other words, the number of visitors to Japan continues to increase. Arrivals in the first nine months of 2024 have already exceeded all arrivals in 2023. Moreover, they exceeded the pace of 2019, when the previous record of 31.88 million was set. That was before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Consumption by visitors to Japan is counted as exports for statistical purposes. Viewed from that perspective, the scale of inbound tourism has already surpassed the export of electronic components and steel. In fact, it has become the second largest "export industry" after automobiles.
Local areas outside of the metropolises have high hopes that foreign visitors will act as a catalyst for economic revitalization. Hopefully, this growth industry and its support for the Japanese economy will continue to expand.
Spreading the Tourism Benefits
However, luring more tourists to local areas is vitally important to realizing such growth.
Over 70% of accommodations for visitors to Japan are now concentrated in the three major metropolitan areas. Those are the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, Kansai, and central Honshu. Indeed, the distribution of tourists is more uneven than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The goal is to attract more wealthy foreign visitors ―those who spend more than ¥1 million ($ 6,600) per person ―to locations outside the metropolises. Proactively, the government has designated 14 model regions for development, including eastern Hokkaido, Hokuriku, Okinawa, and Amami-Oshima. Support is being provided to transform these regions into attractive tourist destinations.
Besides these model regions, many regional cities in Japan have attractive tourism resources. Their attractions range from unique food cultures to historical heritages and festivals. However, promotional measures to effectively disseminate information about them in multiple languages have been inadequate.
Increasing and Broader Appeal
Encouraging visitors to Japan to venture out to other regions should also help combat the problems of overtourism. If left unresolved, it can lead to excessive crowding and poor manners among tourists.
Overtourism is also a factor in lowering satisfaction among visitors to Japan. Furthermore, excessive tourism disrupts daily life and causes dissatisfaction among local residents. If dissatisfaction becomes stronger, it could jeopardize the government's goal of making Japan a "tourism-based nation." It is therefore important to give more thought to creating initiatives that are tailored to specific local circumstances.
The weak yen has spurred an increase in visitors to Japan, along with their strong consumption. However, if monetary policies in Japan and the United States change in the future, the exchange rate may move in the direction of a stronger yen.
Therefore, it is essential to increase Japan's appeal so that foreigners will want to visit even without the benefit of a weak yen. In other words, further efforts to develop inbound tourist consumption as a growth industry will be needed by both the public and private sectors.
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(Read the editorial in Japanese.)
Author: Editorial Board, The Sankei Shimbun
