Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) announced that foreign visitors to Japan increased by 47.1% year on year to record-high 19,737,000 in 2015, about 6 million more visitors than the previous record of 13,413,000 in 2014.
On the contrary, Japanese overseas travelers were down 4.1% to 16,212,100. Foreign visitors accordingly outnumbered Japanese overseas travelers for the first time in the past 45 years. Exchange of travelers between Japan and foreign countries exceeded 30 million.
The table below shows changes of foreign arrivals in the past ten years:
Visitors from all of major inbound travel markets except Russia broke the previous records in 2015. The top market was China with 4,993,800 visitors (+107.3%), followed by Korea with 4,002,100 (+45.3%), which represented the first over 4 million. Visitors from Taiwan were 3,677,100 (+29.9%), exceeding 3 million for the first time. Visitors from Hong Kong exceeded 1 million for the first time, as 1,524,300 travelers (+64.6%) visited Japan.
As a result, visitors from top four markets in East Asia accounted for 72% of the total, which was larger than 66% in 2014.
Visitor arrival results by market in 2015 are as follows:
The remarkable growth of the inbound travel market resulted from several positive factors, such as an increase in port calls of cruise ships, extension of air network, reduction of fuel surcharges on airlines, the JNTO’s successive promotional campaigns, the weak yen trend, ease of the visa rules and expansion of the duty-free rules, according to JNTO.
In the meantime, foreign visitors to Japan in December 2015 were up 43.4% to 1,773,000, which were record-high for December. The table below shows changes of foreign arrivals by month in 2015:
In Japanese
