SNA Travel (Tokyo) — Tomorrow, October 11, is the long-awaited day when the Japanese nation will finally lower the drawbridges and allow most foreign tourists to freely enter the country.
The daily cap on the number of entrants will be abolished and prearranged visas will no longer be required for those arriving from a list of 68 countries, likely to be expanded before too long.
Entrants are still required to show acceptable documentation of either three Covid vaccination shots or a negative Covid test within 72 hours of their plane’s point of departure.
This move has come far later than any other major nation, but even Japan, it seems, has decided that the world is now entering the post-pandemic era–or at least a period in which the threat of Covid should not guide most public policies.
Face masks may prove a sticking point. The government is moving to provide hotels and other tourist accommodation spots with legal authority to reject service to foreign tourists who are not wearing face masks.
But there is also some ambiguity regarding such matters. The government is now advising the public that it doesn’t need to wear face masks outdoors, even as most Japanese are keeping their masks on. Foreign tourists have a delicate decision to make whether to go with the government’s official view that masks aren’t needed outdoors, or else to respect Japanese society’s inclination to travel masked.
It is not clear how quickly major international tourist spots like Ginza or Kyoto will fill up with visitors, but the initial weeks, at least, should still offer travel without enormous crowds. This is especially true because Chinese outbound tourists are restricted by their own government, and they had formed the backbone of the pre-pandemic cohort of international visitors.
One challenge that Japan still needs to overcome is a serious manpower shortage in the hospitality industry after two-and-a-half years of sharply reduced demand. Not only have many people who formerly worked in hospitality moved on to other trades, but the country’s overall demographic crisis cuts into the size of the available workforce each and every year.
Nearly three-quarters of all hotels in Japan are reporting that they are having trouble recruiting a sufficient number of staff.
But there is one factor which provides a big boost for reviving inbound tourism–the Yen exchange rates. With the Yen having fallen so far in value versus the US Dollar and some other currencies, it means that foreign tourists will find great value once they’ve gotten into Japan, and perhaps this will even encourage them to spend more on an individual basis.
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