11-05-2013, 10:12 AM
Australia is set to follow Japan's footsteps
More Tourists Visit a Newly Affordable Japan
By Miho Inada
507 words
11 May 2013
Dow Jones Top North American Equities Stories
DJTNAE
English
Copyright © 2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
The yen's drop is transforming Japan's reputation as a prohibitively expensive place to visit, turbocharging a tourism industry long identified as a growth engine for the maturing economy.
With a dollar now fetching 100 yen--up from less than Y80 in November--the number of foreign visitors has surged while the Japanese curb overseas travel and do more sightseeing at home.
The number of foreign visitors to Japan in March, even before the yen's latest tumble, was up 26% from a year earlier to 857,000, the highest for a March since 1964, when the Japan National Tourism Organization started taking statistics.
The weaker currency has helped Japan's tourism sector overcome a number of setbacks in the past two years. The 2011 nuclear-power-plant accident scared away visitors worried about radiation. Heightened territorial tensions with Beijing have since last year led to a sharp drop in tourists from China, once the fastest-growing source of visitors to Japan. While Chinese travelers continue to shun Japan, visitors from the rest of Asia, Europe, and Russia have more than made up for the gap.
In Ginza, Tokyo's high-end shopping district, a group of 34 tourists from Sweden was riding a large tour bus after shopping on a recent afternoon.
"Japan is selected as the most desired holiday place by the Swedish," said tour guide Magnus Carlsson. "It's a hot destination, which used to be too expensive. But it's now cheaper."
Hiroshi Saito, a tourism-promotion official in Ishikawa, said his prefecture saw a 45% increase in the number of foreign visitors to its famous Kenrokuen garden for the first three months of this year, compared with the same period a year earlier.
Seeing a sharp increase in the number of travelers from South Korea, the prefecture invited 22 travel agencies from the neighboring country to show them around tourist spots and golf courses.
"We'd like to take advantage of the weak yen to lure more tourists," from South Korea, Mr. Saito said. "It's a market that has room to grow." He also thinks Ishikawa can now "take back" Korean tourists who were traveling by ferry in recent years to Japan's southern island of Kyushu, when the strong yen led them to try and cut travel costs.
In Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district on a recent afternoon, Daniel Wijono from Indonesia was waiting for his wife and his mother to finish shopping for cosmetics on the last day of a nine-day trip to Japan. The 37-year-old employee of a manufacturing firm was holding three bags containing electronics gadgets, game character figures, and Uniqlo sweaters.
"It's quite good. Things are cheaper more than 10% this time," he said, comparing prices to his prior visit early last year. "But I'm afraid that I ended up spending more than I had expected."
Write to Miho Inada at miho.inada@wsj.com
Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Document DJTNAE1120130510e95a0008d
More Tourists Visit a Newly Affordable Japan
By Miho Inada
507 words
11 May 2013
Dow Jones Top North American Equities Stories
DJTNAE
English
Copyright © 2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
The yen's drop is transforming Japan's reputation as a prohibitively expensive place to visit, turbocharging a tourism industry long identified as a growth engine for the maturing economy.
With a dollar now fetching 100 yen--up from less than Y80 in November--the number of foreign visitors has surged while the Japanese curb overseas travel and do more sightseeing at home.
The number of foreign visitors to Japan in March, even before the yen's latest tumble, was up 26% from a year earlier to 857,000, the highest for a March since 1964, when the Japan National Tourism Organization started taking statistics.
The weaker currency has helped Japan's tourism sector overcome a number of setbacks in the past two years. The 2011 nuclear-power-plant accident scared away visitors worried about radiation. Heightened territorial tensions with Beijing have since last year led to a sharp drop in tourists from China, once the fastest-growing source of visitors to Japan. While Chinese travelers continue to shun Japan, visitors from the rest of Asia, Europe, and Russia have more than made up for the gap.
In Ginza, Tokyo's high-end shopping district, a group of 34 tourists from Sweden was riding a large tour bus after shopping on a recent afternoon.
"Japan is selected as the most desired holiday place by the Swedish," said tour guide Magnus Carlsson. "It's a hot destination, which used to be too expensive. But it's now cheaper."
Hiroshi Saito, a tourism-promotion official in Ishikawa, said his prefecture saw a 45% increase in the number of foreign visitors to its famous Kenrokuen garden for the first three months of this year, compared with the same period a year earlier.
Seeing a sharp increase in the number of travelers from South Korea, the prefecture invited 22 travel agencies from the neighboring country to show them around tourist spots and golf courses.
"We'd like to take advantage of the weak yen to lure more tourists," from South Korea, Mr. Saito said. "It's a market that has room to grow." He also thinks Ishikawa can now "take back" Korean tourists who were traveling by ferry in recent years to Japan's southern island of Kyushu, when the strong yen led them to try and cut travel costs.
In Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district on a recent afternoon, Daniel Wijono from Indonesia was waiting for his wife and his mother to finish shopping for cosmetics on the last day of a nine-day trip to Japan. The 37-year-old employee of a manufacturing firm was holding three bags containing electronics gadgets, game character figures, and Uniqlo sweaters.
"It's quite good. Things are cheaper more than 10% this time," he said, comparing prices to his prior visit early last year. "But I'm afraid that I ended up spending more than I had expected."
Write to Miho Inada at miho.inada@wsj.com
Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Document DJTNAE1120130510e95a0008d