Life & Leisure

Japan received 25 million tourists in 2023, 80% of pre-pandemic record

Tokyo, Jan 17 (EFE).- Japan received 25 million visitors last year, 80 percent of the pre-pandemic level and a historical record of tourists who traveled to the country in 2019, according to data published Wednesday by Japan’s tourism board.

The data shows the rapid rebound in tourism to Japan after lifting all the border restrictions the country applied due to the global health crisis, meaning only 3.83 million people would travel to the country in 2022.

Japan began applying border restrictions in early 2020 as coronavirus infections spread, and during the global health crisis it implemented a total ban on the entry of visitors, which remained in place until Japanese authorities began to relax those measures in October 2022.

Since then, the number of foreigners traveling to Japan has progressively increased as international flights have resumed.

The devaluation of the yen against other currencies such as the dollar or the euro contributed to this trend during 2023, which makes the Japanese archipelago more attractive compared to other destinations.

The country that brought the most visitors to Japan in 2023 was neighboring South Korea, with 6.95 million travelers and 28 percent of the total.

Taiwan was in second place with 4.2 million travelers, and China in third, with 2.4 million, which is 75 percent less than in 2019, when it was the main country source of visitors to Japan before the pandemic.

In 2019, the year before the global pandemic, Japan welcomed 31.8 million foreign visitors.

The country had set the goal of attracting some 40 million visitors by 2020, the year in which the Tokyo Olympics were initially planned, and had designated tourism as a key driver to increase consumption and revitalize the economy. EFE

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