Japan tourism recovering fast

Japan will soon be celebrating
cherry blossom season.

After spending most of the year reporting bad news about Japan, I finally have some good news to share - international tourists are returning to the land of cherry blossoms faster than anyone expected.

While scanning a World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) report that landed on my desk today, I noticed figures that shows tourism to earthquake and tsunami-ravaged Japan has rebounded faster than anyone ever expected.

In a report the WTTC entitled "The Tohoku Pacific Earthquake & Tsunami: Impact on Travel & Tourism - Update December 2011", analysis shows that domestic and outbound tourism in Japan is now back to pre-March 2011 baseline, with inbound well on the way to recovery.

In a separate report I read today, the Japan National Tourism Organization says Japanese domestic and outbound tourism has recovered ‘losses’ to levels consistent with or better than forecasts made prior to the earthquake.

Due to the dominance of domestic tourism relative to inbound tourism, this implies that total Japanese tourism demand and GDP will have recovered by the end of 2011.

Furthermore, airline data from Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways suggest a quicker recovery in demand for long-haul destinations than for travel to other Asian destinations.

However, inbound travel to Japan has yet to fully recover and for 2011 as a whole, foreign visitor arrivals are expected to be around 25 per cent lower than in 2010.

That said, it's good to see tourists are feeling much more confident about returning to one of my favourite places in the world.

Hong Kong screens airline passengers for radiation in wake of Japan leaks

I just arrived in Hong Kong and it’s like stepping back in time – to the time of SARS and Bird Flu. Air passengers are once again being greeted by masked security and health officials.

Hong Kong health officials appear to be monitoring arriving passengers, especially those from Japan, for radiation. So far, Hong Kong officials have not detected any abnormal rates of radiation on passengers or planes landing here.

However, Taiwan officials reportedly discovered at least one passenger arriving in Taipei had higher than normal levels of radiation on his clothing and that touched off alarm bells in this former British colony.

Taiwan tourism is bracing for a major hit thanks to the problems in Japan. Over one million Japanese visited Taiwan last year but because of the ongoing troubles caused by the earthquake, tsunami and the ongoing nuclear radiation leaks and the economic fallout that is sure to follow, Taiwanese officials are expecting much fewer Japanese to take holidays there in the next few years.

In China, meanwhile, panic buying has broken out for of all things salt. Rumors that sea salt in Japan, a major supplier for Chinese tables, will be contaminated for many years to come sent Chinese consumers rushing to supermarkets and they quickly cleaned out salt and soya sauce shelves.