Huge increase in visitors to Japan
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Visitor arrivals to Japan grew by 62.9% year-on-year in February 2010, according to the latest Japan National Tourism Organization visitor arrival statistics. Visitor numbers to Japan for February hit 665,600, up from 408,628 in 2009. The growth was driven by a large increase in visitors from the UK (+38%), China (+93.2%), South Korea (+85.2%) and Australia (+20.5%).
Japan National Tourism Organization London office Director, Koichiro Yoshida, said, “We are extremely pleased to see UK visitor numbers to Japan bouncing back in such a robust way. February is the end of winter in Japan and not traditionally the most popular time to visit Japan, so we are optimistic the spring cherry blossoms of March and April will show even stronger growth in visitor numbers to Japan.”
British tour operators and airlines have been reporting good sales for Japan in 2010. James Mundy from InsideJapan Tours, recent winners of the Sunday Times Travel Magazine’s Value for Money Awards Best Value Tour Operator Award, said, “We are soon to celebrate our tenth birthday and have seen the demand for travel to Japan grow over the years. 2010 has seen a huge increase of people heading over to Japan with us with tour places up 300% and tailored travel up 95% on the previous year. These figures not only show what a great service we offer but more importantly what an amazing place Japan is with more and more people being inspired by tales of this intriguing country.”
“Cox & Kings is definitely seeing a strong upturn in interest for Japan. We are currently about 25% up on bookings to Japan for travel in 2010 compared with the same time last year and sales taken in January and February for Japan are 115% up,” said Philip Hamilton-Grierson, Marketing Director, Cox & Kings.
Airlines are also seeing a surge in sales to Japan. “Finnair doubled its UK bookings to Tokyo in February and early March and we expect this boost to continue. Finnair is connecting from over 50 cities in Europe to Japan via Helsinki and the frequencies will be increased to 19 weekly flights to Osaka, Tokyo and Nagoya in April – that is equal to over 5,000 seats a week! Japan is a market that continues to grow in popularity,” said Jarkko Konttinen, Head of Brand and Commercial Communications, Finnair.
ENDS
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