Japan looks at novel ways to boost tourism, may even subsidise holidays to lure travellers
There are talks in Japan about subsiding holidays of international travellers, to draw them in. Japan has witnessed the worst passenger arrival numbers in its history due to the pandemic, and is looking at ways to restart tourism.
In fact, the Japan Tourism Agency has proposed paying foreigners half the cost of taking a holiday in Japan. According to various reports, the head of the Japan Tourism Agency, Hiroshi Tabata, said that he’d developed a subsidy plan costing $12.5 billion to entice travellers back to Japan, commencing as soon as July.
To be clear, it’s a plan and not set in concrete yet, and precise details are vague. There’s no word on how it would be paid or what the criteria and exclusions are. For example, there is no guarantee they’ll cover half the cost of All Nippon Airways (ANA) first class and the Park Hyatt in Tokyo, Simpleflying.com has reported.
Japan had an interesting response to the Covid-19 pandemic. They were much slower than many other countries to close their borders, partly because the Olympics were scheduled to run there this year.
But by April, Japan was moving on this front and began banning visitors from many (but not all) countries. But by this stage, the demand for travel had collapsed in any case, and scores of airlines had slashed flights to and from Japan.
The result was that only 2,900 inbound visitors landed in Japan in April. Last year, 31.9 million visitors poured into the popular North Asian country. This year Japan was expecting 40 million visitors, keeping the Olympics in mind. The Olympics has been rescheduled to 2021.
All major local airlines including Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways have radically curtailed their international schedules in recent months. Japan Airlines has slashed its international flights by 96% until the end of June. All Nippon Airways has also slashed most of its international flying. It is running a barebones schedule to just a handful of destinations.