Less than 250,000 visitors! Foreigners visiting Japan in 2021 reached a new low

According to Japan's Kyodo News Agency, the estimated data released by the Japan Tourism Agency on the 19th showed that 245,900 foreigners visited Japan in 2021, the lowest record since the start of statistics in 1964. This is a 94.0% decrease compared to 2020, the largest decline to date. Japanese outbound was 512,200, down 83.9 percent from 2020 and down to a level comparable to 1969 (492,880).

　　According to reports, the number of foreigners visiting Japan reached 31.88 million in 2019, a record high, but in 2020, due to the epidemic, it plummeted to more than 4.11 million. In 2021, this was a 99.2% decrease compared to 2019. The previous record low was 352,800 in 1964.

　　In terms of months, july 2021 saw more than 50,000 people entering tokyo for the Olympic and Paralympic Games athletes and related individuals, but in other months it was sluggish due to increased immigration control.

　　According to reports, the spread of the new mutant strain "Omicron" has delayed the restart of the tourism support program "Go To Travel", and the domestic tourism market in Japan is also very sluggish, and regions with high dependence on tourism consumption are in trouble.

　　The Japanese government has set a target of increasing the number of foreigners visiting Japan to 60 million by 2030. Koichi Wada, director of the Tourism Agency, said at a press conference on the 19th that "whether the goal can be achieved cannot be determined now." Regarding the restart of "Go To Travel", he said that it is difficult to restart at present on the grounds that "we need to wait for the national epidemic to stabilize". (New Jingwei APP)