Travel agencies and accommodation providers in Japan are hopeful for a big boost in business as discounted trips to and from Tokyo have finally been added to the government's Go To Travel tourism campaign. The government had excluded Tokyo from the program shortly before it started in late July, after receiving criticism about the capital's novel coronavirus situation.
The Nippon Travel Agency Co. branch in the PARCO_ya department store in the Ueno district of Taito Ward, Tokyo, on Friday put up a sign that read: "Trips to and from Tokyo are now covered by the Go To Travel campaign." One-fourth of the company's business comes from trips to the Tokyo metropolitan area.
"The addition of Tokyo trips to the campaign should give a boost to the number of travelers," said a company official in charge of the campaign.
Campaign-related travel packages for trips to and from Tokyo from Oct. 1 and onward went on sale Friday at noon. Some travel booking sites became temporarily inaccessible due to a sudden flood of access from customers.
Bookings for Prince Hotels, Inc. in the two hours from noon Friday jumped about five-fold compared with the same period last year, while one hotel in Tokyo experienced a roughly 50-fold surge in sales.
Travel giant JTB Corp. has additionally announced a special program to give customers points for every trip they make.
The tourism industry has been hit hard by the spread of the novel coronavirus. According to preliminary data released by the Japan Tourism Agency on Friday, domestic travel spending in the April-June period was 1.004 trillion yen, an 83.3% decline from the same period last year.
Although the Go To Travel campaign began on July 22, the amount of money handled by about 50 major travel agencies in August remained 80% lower than the same month last year.
Some analysts believe that the effect of the campaign will be limited without trips to and from Tokyo.
Now that Tokyo trips are being added to the campaign, customers will be eligible for discounts also on trips that they have already booked for Oct. 1 and onward. However, they will have to contact the travel agency with which they made their reservations and ask to switch their plan to one covered by the discounts.
Meanwhile, if the number of coronavirus infections increases, the government will consider excluding Tokyo trips from the campaign once again.
Regarding cancellation fees as a result of such a decision, the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry will ask travel agencies to ensure that the fees will not be borne by customers. The government has said it will cover losses incurred by operators with its travel project budget.
-- Accommodation fees down 32%
August's consumer price index, which excludes volatile perishable food prices, stood at 101.3 against 100 for the base year of 2015, down by 0.4% from the same month last year, according to the data released by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry on Friday. The index came in negative for the first time in three months.
Accommodation fees at hotels and inns fell 32% as a result of the Go To Travel campaign.
The campaign is subsidized by the government to discount lodging and other fees by 35%. Because the CPI is calculated based on the amount of money spent by consumers, the campaign served as a downward factor.
The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry estimates that accommodation fees fell 7.1% when the impact of the campaign is excluded.
-- Visitors to Japan down 99.7%
The number of foreign visitors to Japan in August was down by 99.7% from the same month last year to 8,700 due to the impact of entry restrictions imposed after the pandemic, according to data released Friday by the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO). It was the 11th consecutive month of decline compared with the previous year.
According to the JNTO, the number of business people traveling to Japan increased after the entry restrictions were partially eased, and the number of visitors recovered slightly from July, when it totaled only 3,800.
By country and region, the number of visitors from China was the largest at 1,600, followed by Vietnam at 1,100, South Korea and the United States at 700, respectively.
The number of Japanese departing from the country in August was down by 98.2% from the same month last year to 37,100, but it increased from July when it totaled 20,295.
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