Buoyed by the weakening yen, Chinese tourists are flocking Japan. A record high 2.01 million Chinese visited Japan between January and October of this year, an 80.3% increase year-on-year. The bulk of these visitors travel along the so-called Golden Route, another name for the Tokyo-Osaka corridor, which includes Mt. Fuji and other points in between. Amid this backdrop, local officials and industry representatives are striving to attract more independent travelers and repeat travelers to Kyushu. The Kyushu Tourism Promotion Organization set up a booth at a recent trade fair in Shanghai where it handed out pamphlets touting Kyushu as a ‘hot spring island’. One of the biggest tourism-related trade fairs, the Shanghai show attracted 80,000 visitors. This year the seven prefectures of Kyushu, working through the Organization, displayed a unified regional presence, as opposed to the past when individual municipalities tended to run their own booths. The national tourist organization, JNTO, is also beefing up its promotion of Kyushu in Beijing and Shanghai with the aim of attracting more repeat visitors. Koreans accounted for nearly half of the foreign visitors who came to Kyushu between January and September this year, but number of Chinese visitors increased significantly, up 55.7% year-on-year. Most Chinese visitors alight in Kyushu on cruise ship ports of call. Source: Nishinippon Shimbun 12/9
