Japan has fully opened its doors to visitors after more than two years of pandemic isolation.
On Tuesday, the country restored visa-free travel to dozens of countries, ending some of the world’s strictest Covid-19 border controls. Japan has also lifted its entry limit of 50,000 people and ended the requirement that tourists travel as part of tour groups, Kyodo news agency reported.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is counting on tourism to help boost the economy and reap some benefits from the yen’s plunge to a 24-year low – but hopes for a tourism boom face headwinds: a shortage of hospitality workers, ongoing pandemic concerns and predictions by economists that tourism returns would be gradual.
Kishida said last week that the government is aiming to attract 5 trillion yen ($34.5 billion) in annual tourism spending. That goal may be too ambitious for a sector that has withered during the pandemic.
Spending by overseas visitors will reach just 2.1 trillion yen by 2023 and will not surpass pre-Covid levels until 2025, economist Takahide Kiuchi wrote in a Nomura Research Institute report.
Since June, Japan has allowed tourists to visit in groups accompanied by guides, a requirement that was further relaxed to include self-guided tour packages.
Just over half a million visitors have come to Japan so far in 2022, compared to a record 31.8 million in 2019.
Arata Sawa is among those eager for the return of foreign visitors, who previously made up 90% of guests at his traditional guesthouse.
“I hope and predict that many foreigners will come to Japan, just like before Covid,” said Sawa, the third-generation owner of Tokyo’s Sawanoya ryokan.
Flag carrier Japan Airlines Co has seen inbound bookings triple since the border easing announcement, president Yuji Akasaka told the Nikkei newspaper last week — but demand for international travel won’t fully recover until 2025.
“I don’t think there will be a sudden return to the pre-pandemic situation,” said Sawato Shindo, president of Amina Collection Co, a gift and souvenir chain with 120 stores.
Hopes for a booming tourism rebound are also dampened by a labor shortage. Almost 73% of hotels nationwide said they were short of regular workers in August, up from about 27% a year earlier, according to market research firm Teikoku Databank.
Akihisa Inaba, general manager at the Yokikan hot spring resort in Shizuoka, central Japan, who said short staffing in the summer meant workers had to give up time off.
“Obviously, the labor shortage will become more pronounced when domestic travel returns,” Inaba said. “So I’m not so sure we can be happy.”
Whether overseas visitors will wear face masks and observe other common infection controls in Japan is another concern. Strict border controls were widely known throughout most of the pandemic, and fears remain of the emergence of new viral variants.
On Friday the government approved changes to hotel regulations so that operators can turn away guests who do not comply with infection controls during an outbreak.
“Since the start of the pandemic until now, we have only had a few foreign guests,” said Tokyo innkeeper Sawa. “Almost everyone wore masks, but I’m really not sure if people visiting from here on out will do the same.”
One force that could drive visitors back is the yen’s decline: the yen has weakened significantly against the dollar, giving some visitors much more purchasing power and making Japan attractive to bargain hunters targeting electronics, luxury goods and areas retail of Japan.
In Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district, Hideyuki Abe’s shelves are filled with watches and souvenirs such as samurai swords and toy cats with bouncy heads. Abe employs about 50 people and had resorted to layoffs since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. Some Akihabara stores have since closed, but he bided his time.
“Only where the power lies,” said Abe. “Now, I’m a little worried about the lack of workers.”
With pandemic restrictions easing and the dollar at a three-decade high of around 145 yen, he believes tourists will return.
“This time,” he says, “it’s a perfect opportunity.”
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report
