Towards a More Sustainable Japan Tourism

SNA Travel (Tokyo) — As the Japanese government finally begins to reopen the country to inbound foreign tourists after several years, it is an ideal occasion to rethink how the tourism industry operates and what the Japanese nation should aim to get out of it.

The explosive growth of inbound tourism was arguably the main success of Abenomics, with tens of millions of people from overseas flooding into the country, spending money in hotels, restaurants, and in shops that was greatly beneficial to many Japan residents.

The importance of the industry was thrown into sharp relief by the arrival of the Covid pandemic in early 2020, when suddenly all those revenues, and the employment it created, vanished, leaving behind a great deal of economic hardship.

Frankly, however, not everyone was displeased with these circumstances, because in some ways that disappearance of short-term foreign tourists increased quality of life in some parts of Japan.

Many residents of the ancient capital city of Kyoto, for example, felt a sense of relief that not every road was clogged full of foreign and domestic tourists, many of them showing little respect to locals with littering and noise-making. The city fell deep into an economic crisis, but at the same time it had become more livable.

To a lesser extent, the same could be said of some districts of Tokyo such as Asakusa and Ginza, which had become venues where hordes spilled out of tourist buses, making the areas less pleasant for Japan residents to visit and enjoy.

For this reason–and because of global problems such as climate change and environmental pollution–there needs to be a greater focus on sustainable tourism in Japan going forward, by which we mean forms of tourism that do not degrade Japan experiences for those who live here and for future generations.

As SNA Travel reboots its coverage after several years of dormancy, we will focus much of our attention on issues related to sustainable tourism.