WTTC: Japan Tourism Recovering Faster Than Expected

Above, Harajuku Station in Tokyo. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

There's some good news for the Japanese tourism industry.

Breaking Travel News.com posted:

The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) has announced the launch of the third of four quarterly reports into the recovery of the Japanese tourism industry following the Tohoku Tsunami earlier this year.

According to the report – officially entitled The Tohoku Pacific Earthquake & Tsunami: Impact on Travel & Tourism - Update December 2011 – the tourism industry in the country has rebounded strongly in the second half of 2011 and more rapidly than previously expected.

In the World Travel & Tourism Council’s second Japan report in September 2011, analysis of tourism data showed the recovery was in line with the low impact scenario, and more recent analysis shows that domestic and outbound tourism is now back to pre-March 2011 baseline, with inbound well on the way to recovery.

Inbound travel has yet to fully recover and for 2011 as a whole, foreign visitor arrivals are expected to be around 25 per cent lower than in 2010.

Arrivals continue to be in line with previous WTTC low impact scenario, which states that international tourist arrivals will recover in numbers by early 2012.

This is good news for businesses who cater to the tourism market in Japan. The March 11 earthquake and tsunami along with radiation fears caused a big drop in foreign tourists to Japan.

To read the full article, go here.