Japan reopens to tourists despite headwinds

STORY: After 2 years of pandemic isolation, Japan is finally opening its doors to visitors.

However hopes for a tourism boom face an uphill battle with a lack of hospitality workers and bolted shut shops.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is banking on tourism to help stimulate the economy and reap some benefits from the yen’s slide to a 24-year low.

Arata Sawa is among those keen for the return of foreign tourists, who used to make up nearly 90% of the guests at his inn.

"People from abroad will be able to come here as independent tourists from the 11th (of October). I'm hoping and anticipating that a lot of foreigners will come to Japan, just like how it was before COVID."

"Well, when the COVID pandemic started, the kind of guests that Sawanoya had been receiving, individual travellers, were suddenly unable to enter Japan, so up until now, we've been in a situation where we've had basically zero visitors. So in the beginning (of the pandemic), there were so many days with zero guests."

A mere half a million people have come to Japan so far this year – stark in comparison to the whopping 32 million in 2019.

Spending from tourists will only reach around 2 trillion yen - that's 13 billion dollars - by 2023 and won’t exceed pre-Covid levels until 2025, according to a report by the Nomura Research institute.

British inn guest Jenny Owen hopes foreign travellers will be respect Japan's mask-on etiquette.

"I worry for Japan in that way and I hope that people can come here and be respectful about the measures that Japan are putting in, whether it seems like the right measure to us or not, we have to respect it and do what they say."

Flag carrier Japan Airlines has seen inbound bookings triple since the border easing announcement.