Tourism industry feels the impact of a collision at sea
Julian Ryall in Tokyo 08 February 2011
Last August, Sapporo’s Toyoko Inn proudly announced the introduction of 24-hour service of Putonghua-speaking front-desk employees for guests, and the introduction of Chinese signage throughout the hotel.
It seemed a sensible move at the time, given the huge influx of mainland tourists to the largest city on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido. Sapporo’s shopping centres were thronging with Chinese visitors, and the famed tourist spots of Lake Mashu and the Shiretoko Peninsula were attracting busloads from China.
The Toyoko Inn, in the usually heaving Susukino entertainment district, has 195 rooms, receptionist Natsuko Azuma says.
But now, there is not a single mainland guest.
“We have four Chinese staff, and many of our other employees speak the language very well. We had expected when we started this service that many guests from China would choose our hotel to stay in,” Azuma says. “But they have not come.”
Asked why she thinks there are far fewer Chinese tourists in Hokkaido at the moment, she pauses for a moment before saying she is not sure.
It is not just the Toyoko Inn, either.
In late August, the Japan National Tourism Organisation (JNTO) predicted that 1.8 million mainlanders would visit Japan in the 2010-11 financial year, up by a whopping 80 per cent from 1.01 million in 2008. The tourism organisation estimated that the 120 billion yen (HK$11.3 billion) that Chinese spent in Japanese shops in 2008 would increase to a mouth-watering 430 billion yen by next year.
But the optimistic officials spoke too soon. Just days after their prediction, mainland fisherman Zhan Qixiong was involved in a collision with a Japanese coastguard vessel in waters close to the disputed Diaoyu Islands, which the Japanese call the Senkaku.
“As you can imagine, now is not a good environment when it comes to Sino-Japanese relations, and the situation is very difficult,” concedes Yoshi Koyasu, the head of media relations at the JNTO.
According to the organisation’s figures, 106,400 mainlanders travelled to Japan in October last year, down 1.8 per cent from the same month in the previous year.
The slump in November - by which time the diplomatic row had escalated and attitudes on both sides of the East China Sea were becoming far more entrenched - was far more dramatic. Just 68,500 mainlanders arrived in Japan, down 15.9 per cent from a year earlier. In the same month, 27,400 tourists from Hong Kong arrived in Japan, a decline of 14.7 per cent year on year.
Koyasu shrugged his shoulders and said: “I guess it’s only natural.”
The slump in visitor numbers is all the more startling given the big increases that were previously registered.
According to Hokkaido prefectural government statistics, about 92,700 Chinese visited the prefecture in the year to April 1, 2010, nearly double the 47,400 who visited in the same period a year earlier.
Japan as a whole was enjoying a boom in the number of mainland tourists, aided in large part by the relaxing of tourist visa requirements in July last year. That month, 165,100 of them arrived in Japan, up 60,000 from the month before and more than double the number in July 2009.
They accounted for 17 per cent of all foreigners arriving in Japan for the first 11 months of last year, according to Japan Tourism Marketing, and contributed more than 23 per cent of all spending by foreign tourists from July to September last year, according to the Japan Tourism Agency.
Retailers welcomed the influx of consumers with cash to spend. A government study showed that Chinese tourists each spent an average of 78,000 yen on shopping during their stay, far more than the mere 27,000 yen spent by American tourists or 47,000 yen by visitors from France.
Megumi Ashizawa, of the Japan Travel Bureau, agrees there was a decline in tourist numbers in October and November.
“We are not sure why Chinese people have stopped coming because we have not asked them,” she says. “But I guess there can only be one reason.”
Asked what that reason might be, Ashizawa declined to elaborate.
A spokeswoman for Tokyo Disneyland says the park has “not seen so much change” in visitor numbers, and Tomoka Kizaka - an official of the Hato Bus Company which operates sightseeing buses in and around Tokyo - will admit only that the number of mainland customers is “slightly lower” since September.
Tellingly, the Beijing-based health food and cosmetics company Baojian cancelled a scheduled trip to Japan in early October for 10,000 of its staff in the wake of the Diaoyu Islands clash.
Instead, the company took its employees to South Korea for their summer break. It reportedly plans to return to the same destination next year.
On November 17, Hiroshi Mizohata, commissioner of the Japan Tourism Agency, attended a ceremony in Shanghai during which he met representatives of the largest mainland travel agencies, announcing that the Japanese government would relax the qualification requirements for Chinese-language tour guides as one measure to attract visitors, as well as increasing the number of hotels and inns where programmes are available in Chinese.
Other measures being worked out include multiple-entry visas for Chinese nationals, which may be introduced this year.
Mizohata sidestepped the question of the impact the island issue was having on the industry - he said it had been “not serious” - but the message was clear: Japan needs Chinese tourists and believes it still has plenty to offer. “We have many programmes going on as part of the ‘Visit Japan’ campaign, and we are trying to promote our message strongly all over the world,” Koyasu says.
“Shortly after the incident, we updated our president’s message on the front page of our Chinese-language website in an effort to reach out to the Chinese who were wondering whether they should come to Japan,” he said.
The new messages emphasised that Japan was perfectly safe for mainland visitors and that they would be welcomed with usual hospitality. “We wanted travel agencies to print out the message and share them with their clients,” he says.
The furore over the Diaoyu Islands has died down, although it is likely to remain a thorn in the side of relations between Tokyo and Beijing. The Japanese travel industry hopes that nothing happens to disturb the peace in the next few weeks as it gears up for the busiest time of the year for Chinese tourists.
“It is very difficult to anticipate firm numbers of Chinese coming to Japan during the Lunar New Year celebrations, but it is the busiest season for Chinese tourists here,” Koyasu says. “We hope they will come.” So important is February for tourism-related businesses that there are fears that a bad year might see the end of some companies.
2 comments:
Mainlanders shun Japan amid simmering Diaoyus row
Tourism industry feels the impact of a collision at sea
Julian Ryall in Tokyo
08 February 2011
Last August, Sapporo’s Toyoko Inn proudly announced the introduction of 24-hour service of Putonghua-speaking front-desk employees for guests, and the introduction of Chinese signage throughout the hotel.
It seemed a sensible move at the time, given the huge influx of mainland tourists to the largest city on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido. Sapporo’s shopping centres were thronging with Chinese visitors, and the famed tourist spots of Lake Mashu and the Shiretoko Peninsula were attracting busloads from China.
The Toyoko Inn, in the usually heaving Susukino entertainment district, has 195 rooms, receptionist Natsuko Azuma says.
But now, there is not a single mainland guest.
“We have four Chinese staff, and many of our other employees speak the language very well. We had expected when we started this service that many guests from China would choose our hotel to stay in,” Azuma says. “But they have not come.”
Asked why she thinks there are far fewer Chinese tourists in Hokkaido at the moment, she pauses for a moment before saying she is not sure.
It is not just the Toyoko Inn, either.
In late August, the Japan National Tourism Organisation (JNTO) predicted that 1.8 million mainlanders would visit Japan in the 2010-11 financial year, up by a whopping 80 per cent from 1.01 million in 2008. The tourism organisation estimated that the 120 billion yen (HK$11.3 billion) that Chinese spent in Japanese shops in 2008 would increase to a mouth-watering 430 billion yen by next year.
But the optimistic officials spoke too soon. Just days after their prediction, mainland fisherman Zhan Qixiong was involved in a collision with a Japanese coastguard vessel in waters close to the disputed Diaoyu Islands, which the Japanese call the Senkaku.
“As you can imagine, now is not a good environment when it comes to Sino-Japanese relations, and the situation is very difficult,” concedes Yoshi Koyasu, the head of media relations at the JNTO.
According to the organisation’s figures, 106,400 mainlanders travelled to Japan in October last year, down 1.8 per cent from the same month in the previous year.
The slump in November - by which time the diplomatic row had escalated and attitudes on both sides of the East China Sea were becoming far more entrenched - was far more dramatic. Just 68,500 mainlanders arrived in Japan, down 15.9 per cent from a year earlier. In the same month, 27,400 tourists from Hong Kong arrived in Japan, a decline of 14.7 per cent year on year.
Koyasu shrugged his shoulders and said: “I guess it’s only natural.”
The slump in visitor numbers is all the more startling given the big increases that were previously registered.
According to Hokkaido prefectural government statistics, about 92,700 Chinese visited the prefecture in the year to April 1, 2010, nearly double the 47,400 who visited in the same period a year earlier.
Japan as a whole was enjoying a boom in the number of mainland tourists, aided in large part by the relaxing of tourist visa requirements in July last year. That month, 165,100 of them arrived in Japan, up 60,000 from the month before and more than double the number in July 2009.
They accounted for 17 per cent of all foreigners arriving in Japan for the first 11 months of last year, according to Japan Tourism Marketing, and contributed more than 23 per cent of all spending by foreign tourists from July to September last year, according to the Japan Tourism Agency.
Retailers welcomed the influx of consumers with cash to spend. A government study showed that Chinese tourists each spent an average of 78,000 yen on shopping during their stay, far more than the mere 27,000 yen spent by American tourists or 47,000 yen by visitors from France.
Megumi Ashizawa, of the Japan Travel Bureau, agrees there was a decline in tourist numbers in October and November.
“We are not sure why Chinese people have stopped coming because we have not asked them,” she says. “But I guess there can only be one reason.”
Asked what that reason might be, Ashizawa declined to elaborate.
A spokeswoman for Tokyo Disneyland says the park has “not seen so much change” in visitor numbers, and Tomoka Kizaka - an official of the Hato Bus Company which operates sightseeing buses in and around Tokyo - will admit only that the number of mainland customers is “slightly lower” since September.
Tellingly, the Beijing-based health food and cosmetics company Baojian cancelled a scheduled trip to Japan in early October for 10,000 of its staff in the wake of the Diaoyu Islands clash.
Instead, the company took its employees to South Korea for their summer break. It reportedly plans to return to the same destination next year.
On November 17, Hiroshi Mizohata, commissioner of the Japan Tourism Agency, attended a ceremony in Shanghai during which he met representatives of the largest mainland travel agencies, announcing that the Japanese government would relax the qualification requirements for Chinese-language tour guides as one measure to attract visitors, as well as increasing the number of hotels and inns where programmes are available in Chinese.
Other measures being worked out include multiple-entry visas for Chinese nationals, which may be introduced this year.
Mizohata sidestepped the question of the impact the island issue was having on the industry - he said it had been “not serious” - but the message was clear: Japan needs Chinese tourists and believes it still has plenty to offer. “We have many programmes going on as part of the ‘Visit Japan’ campaign, and we are trying to promote our message strongly all over the world,” Koyasu says.
“Shortly after the incident, we updated our president’s message on the front page of our Chinese-language website in an effort to reach out to the Chinese who were wondering whether they should come to Japan,” he said.
The new messages emphasised that Japan was perfectly safe for mainland visitors and that they would be welcomed with usual hospitality. “We wanted travel agencies to print out the message and share them with their clients,” he says.
The furore over the Diaoyu Islands has died down, although it is likely to remain a thorn in the side of relations between Tokyo and Beijing. The Japanese travel industry hopes that nothing happens to disturb the peace in the next few weeks as it gears up for the busiest time of the year for Chinese tourists.
“It is very difficult to anticipate firm numbers of Chinese coming to Japan during the Lunar New Year celebrations, but it is the busiest season for Chinese tourists here,” Koyasu says. “We hope they will come.” So important is February for tourism-related businesses that there are fears that a bad year might see the end of some companies.
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