Japan reopens to tourists despite closed gift stores and a lack of hotel staff

• As Japan welcomes tourists this week for the first time in more than two years of epidemic seclusion.
• Hopes for a tourism boom are challenged by shuttered stores and a labor shortfall in the hotel industry.
• To stop the spread of COVID-19, Japan will abolish some of the harshest border controls in the world starting on Tuesday and resume visa-free travel to dozens of nations.

As Japan welcomes tourists this week for the first time in more than two years of epidemic seclusion, hopes for a tourism boom are challenged by shuttered stores and a labor shortfall in the hotel industry.

To stop the spread of COVID-19, Japan will abolish some of the harshest border controls in the world starting on Tuesday and resume visa-free travel to dozens of nations. Tourism is expected to stimulate the economy and help offset some of the negative effects of the yen’s decline to a 24-year low, according to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Arata Sawa is one of many who is looking forward to the resurgence of foreign visitors, who once made up much to 90% of the visitors to his traditional inn.

According to Sawa, the third-generation owner of the Sawanoya ryokan in Tokyo, “I’m expecting and anticipating that a lot of foreigners will come to Japan, exactly like before COVID.”

Compared to a record 31.8 million tourists in 2019, little over 500,000 people have visited Japan so far in 2022. Prior to both being ruined by the coronavirus, the government had set a goal of 40 million by 2020, timed to coincide with the Summer Olympics.

According to Kishida’s remarks from last week, the government wants to increase yearly tourist spending to 5 trillion yen ($34.5 billion). But for a sector that has shrunk due to the epidemic, that objective might be too lofty. Government data show that between 2019 and 2021, hotel employment fell by 22%.

Only 2.1 trillion yen will be spent by foreign tourists by 2023, and it won’t surpass pre-COVID levels until 2025, predicted economist Takahide Kiuchi of the Nomura Research Institute.

President Yuji Akasaka told the Nikkei newspaper last week that since the border relaxation announcement, incoming reservations for flag carrier Japan Airlines have tripled. Nevertheless, he continued, the demand for foreign travel won’t fully rebound until about 2025.

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