Where have all the Japanese tourists gone?
Is the Japanese tourist, for so long in good numbers a welcome and reliable fixture at our most famous tourist spots, now in serious decline? The number of Japanese travelling abroad is still well down on pre-Covid times and with government data just released revealing that fewer and fewer Japanese even hold a passport, the slump could be prolonged, which would be disastrous for the UK tourism and hospitality industry.
According to the Japanese government, only around 17 per cent of Japanese adults currently hold a passport, a significantly lower rate than the US and UK (50 and 85 per cent respectively). It seems the Japanese are less and less inclined to travel. The reasons are not difficult to identify but quite hard to address. They fall into two categories:medical (or perhaps psychological) and financial.
The first is the legacy of the Covid restrictions that for a while returned Japan to its exclusionary Sakoku period of splendid isolation.
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