INTERVIEW: JATA Head Calls for Reducing Reliance on Chinese Visitors

Tokyo, Dec. 9 (Jiji Press)–Hiroyuki Takahashi, chairman of the Japan Association of Travel Agents, has stressed the need for the country to avoid heavily depending on travel demand from one specific country. Growing tensions between Japan and China have led to the “complete halt of group tours to Japan arranged by Chinese travel agencies,” Takahashi, also chairman of major Japanese travel agency JTB Corp., said in an interview Monday. Still, Chinese people continue visiting Japan on personal trips. Beijing has called on Chinese citizens to refrain from traveling to Japan, following Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s parliamentary remark last month that China’s possible use of force against Taiwan could constitute a so-called survival-threatening situation for Japan, in which the country can exercise its right to collective self-defense. Since travelers from China make up more than 20 pct of the total foreign visitors to Japan, the current situation is having a large impact on Japanese travel industries. A similar case occurred in 2012, when the Japan-China relationship deteriorated after the Japanese government nationalized some of the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture, southernmost Japan, resulting in a plunge in Chinese group tours to Japan. The islands in the East China Sea are claimed by China. At the time, the Japanese industries worked on increasing visitors from the United States and Europe to cover the drop in Chinese travelers to Japan. The efforts “paid off,” Takahashi recalled, adding that the industries need to tackle the current problem in a similar way. On the plan by the Japanese government and ruling coalition to raise the departure tax, which is imposed on people leaving Japan, Takahashi called for using some of the tax revenue for measures to promote Japanese people’s travel abroad. The number of people who traveled abroad from Japan in 2024 was down by about 30 pct from the level before the COVID-19 pandemic, due partly to the impact of the yen’s weakness. “When it comes to ‘give-and-take,’ Japan only ‘takes’ in terms of foreign travel,” he said, warning that unless Japanese people’s demand for overseas travel recovers, that could end up affecting the maintenance of air routes in the future. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]