Resumption of tourism - Latest info?

While not cruise ships, Asiana Airlines is planning to restart a lot of its flights from Incheon to various airports in Japan and I can't find the article now, but a few airlines were looking to increase flights between Hawaii and Japan for the Summer. Northern Pacific Airlines is hoping to launch in the 3rd or 4th quarter of 2022 as a new low cost carrier from the US to Japan and South Korea with stopovers in Anchorage.

South Koreans make up a large percentage of tourists to Japan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Japan

South Korea is not quite as large as China in terms of number of tourists, but they're awful close. Accordingly to Bloomberg, Carrie Lam the current political leader in Hong Kong, spoke just yesterday about trying to find ways to open Hong Kong sooner rather than later as they are losing lots of business to Singapore.

Which cruise companies are those?
For October 2022, companies include Celebrity, Westerdam, Silver Muse and Oceania with eight departures listed.
For the specific month I was looking at originally, that was March 2023 with a couple of other companies listed (Dimond and Seven Seas).
Will they be cancelled - don't know and I don't particularly care as I'm not interested in cruises. There might be sufficient domestic demand for some of them to operate.

South Korea is not quite as large as China in terms of number of tourists, but they're awful close. Accordingly to Bloomberg, Carrie Lam the current political leader in Hong Kong, spoke just yesterday about trying to find ways to open Hong Kong sooner rather than later as they are losing lots of business to Singapore.


This was already happening anyways due to CCP's "takeover" of Hong Kong the few years prior. Doing business in HK used to be preferable due to its language accessibility and business accessibility, but CCP is highly restrictive, so even many HKers moved their money and livelihoods to Singapore. The pandemic of course hasn't helped, but I think things were already moving out of HK anyways.

Just to update you all, this week the JATA are still pushing for restricted group tours ONLY for this summer. I would say it's unlikely regular tourists will be allowed in before the July elections, in my opinion, but let's hope they will finally open properly after.

The JATA "timeline" keeps getting revised and pushed back every time they send out a newsletter - certainly since I first saw their optimistic plan eight months ago. It is obvious that JATA have absolutely ZERO say or influence on the timeline or how tourism will resume.

I hope you're right! Monitored group tours would be a terrible idea.

May I ask how is the local tourism in Japan nowadays? Just curiosity. ;)

I hate group tours, or mandatory tours ala Bhutan. Let's hope Japan won't follow that. I like to travel solo, as a female solo traveler.

I'm still hoping to go to Japan in August 2023, if borders are open, of course...

These can of course be canceled, but JTB USA is currently selling tours to Japan from September 2022.
https://www.jtbusa.com/Branch.aspx?city=Seattle

JTB is also advertising needing a new associate in Hawaii, though they've closed some of their brick and mortar locations within the US (I'm looking at you NYC.)

Hawaii has been trying to ramp up reopening to Japanese tourists. It's not that they're not getting non-Asian tourists. Hawaii has been super popular with mainlanders (I've been twice since April 2020), but there are also many smaller operators and programs that specifically target Japanese tourists and they're hurting. I think if the Japanese start going to Hawaii, it's a lot harder to argue against not letting tourists in, since once people start leaving their home countries they can bring any contagions back with them.

Anecdotally, of the people I know in Japan, (all foreigners, though at least one has PR) most have not been going anywhere outside of from their home to work. I know there are people traveling within Japan, just not most of the people I know personally. I do know that my daughter's school friend (who is a Japanese ex-pat) went back to Japan for New Years and I expect plans to go back to Japan for the Summer. (That is what all the NY ex-pat families did.) The whole family is fully vaccinated and since the friend turned 12 in January, they can even get a booster in the next few weeks.

It is not just JTB advertising tours/trips for 2022. At the beginning of the year one of the aggregation companies (can't remember which) broadcast an email linking to many companies advertising trips from as early as February 2022. Only an idiot would have booked one of those (and some of those companies were charging over US$1,000/day pp). I would expect an awful lot for that price, but I know some people pay up, otherwise they wouldn't be in business.
Domestically tourism is lower than a normal year, but I did see a reference recently that the market is something over 290 million trips per year in 2020 (makes international visitors of 30M rather small), but of course that includes a lot of short duration journeys. For the decade prior, the average was 600 million trips per year - business and leisure.
Personally I have two trips planned for the next couple of months and did three trips last year.

I just picked JTB because they're a relatively large company both in Japan and Internationally. There have been a lot of articles about Hawaii trying to woo back Japanese tourism (as well as articles on them being overwhelmed with mainlander tourism.)

I've only used JTB to buy rail passes and Ghibli tickets (and back in the day I booked some hotels via Japanican) not for any of their actual tours. I guess for people who need a guided tour they're not ridiculously priced? I have definitely seen companies offering prices that seemed much more insane. *cough* Geographic Expeditions *cough* For something which is not actual custom their prices seem very high to me.

I think... Japanese tourism for Japanese citizens isn't always to the same places as tourism by foreigners and again it's a bit like Hawaii. Hawaii is getting tons of mainlander tourism right now, but they still want to figure out a way to get Japanese tourism back.

I am personally planning my trips for Summer as well as Summer programs for my child. I might think of an itinerary or leave a potential blank space in case Japan opens, but I'm not going to just count on Japan opening for our only Summer fun.

If someone can make sense of this news https://news.tbs.co.jp/newseye/tbs_newseye6011777.html please explain

Here is similar information out of Reuters in English

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-lift-covid-19-entry-b...

It looks like this is going to make it much easier for students and business people? It's still a positive step.

The director of Japan Association of Travel Agents visited Hawaii yesterday, apparently to gear up for resumption of tourism between Japan and Hawaii. Nobody talked about specific dates, but "by summer" is widely speculated.
https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2022/04/06/once-japan-drops-its-covid-re...

If someone can make sense of this news https://news.tbs.co.jp/newseye/tbs_newseye6011777.html please explain
Short answer, there is no change.
Longer answer, the Ministry of Justice automatically denies arrivals from countries designated as alert level 3 or 4 as set by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As those countries are still level 3 or 4, there is no change.
Plus, the visa waiver programme is still suspended and Japan is not giving out short term visas, so you're not getting into Japan any time soon.
And, the cap on entry is still 7000/day, rising to 10,000 on Monday - hardly a reopening.
Expect false hope and mis-reporting as that statement makes it into various travel news.

Baby steps though. Better than nothing. And still in the correct direction.

Thank you @JapanCustomTours. I came here after reading about the changes on Mainichi & being very confused.Your post makes it much clearer

Actually, I got the impression from the Japan Times that the 106 countries are moving to category 2 (or possibly 1) and that foreigners will now not be denied entry because of coming from those 106 countries. Instead they will be denied entry for not having a visa since the visa waiver program has been suspended. To add credence to this, according to the Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs webpage https://www.mofa.go.jp/ca/fna/page4e_001053.html

14 countries (including the US and Canada) that had not previously had their visa waiver program suspended will have their visa program suspended on the 8th when the 106 countries change categories. And it makes sense, because otherwise someone from the US would then be able to just arrive in Japan and enter the country under the visa waiver.

This again, goes along with every article I've seen since most mention foreigners will no longer de denied entry but tourists still can't come, and it's because all visa waivers are suspended. It also makes sense because why else suspend visa waivers with the US and Canada now?

Personally, I count this as good news because there are a lot of foreigners without PR living in Japan and it sounds like if they get a reentry visa, it's much easier now for them to see family in their home country, since they won't automatically be denied reentry.

@rkold
Personally, I count this as good news because there are a lot of foreigners without PR living in Japan and it sounds like if they get a reentry visa, it's much easier now for them to see family in their home country, since they won't automatically be denied reentry.
Actually I believe these residents could already travel since a while. Even in the November to February timeframe when everything was shut.

So I think practically that change of 106 countries doesn�ft change anything. But it�fs a step. And I�fd guess there might now be some pressure from some countries / Japanese organizations to reinstate the visa waiver program for some countries. So maybe travel by July/August for tourist could become possible.

@LikeBike, honestly I am unsure. I have a friend with PR, some friends with just long term working visas, and then know some people married to Japanese women with children who have American-Japanese citizenship, but I am not 100% sure what visa the American father has. (It could be spouse, it could be PR, it could be something else, they're all there 100% legally though, I just don't know what they have.) The people I know for sure are on working visas haven't felt comfortable leaving Japan and yeah, the concern is partially will they be let back in. Heck, my friend with PR was concerned about being let back in. The previous language made it sound like going to those 106 countries could be cause for denial of entry. I know it was perfectly fine for Japanese citizens, because in December my daughter had an ex-pat classmate who went back to Shiga-ken and the US was part of the 106 countries, but I think for many foreigners I know personally it felt sort of risky.

I think if I am right and the 106 countries have been moved from status 3 or 4 to status 1 or 2, it's an important step because then the suspended visa waiver program just needs to no longer be suspended and again it makes sense with the change to the US and Canadian visas since at the moment neither the US or Canada is having a surge unlike in January.

Right now it doesn't change the status quo for tourists at all, but it is taking a step towards changing the status quo.

I admit, I'm not buying airfare just yet, but I am working on a potential itinerary just in case Japan opens in August since that is the latest month we can travel until our December school break. But I'm relatively conservative and planning an itinerary only costs me time, not any actual money. I don't want to be stuck with credits with an airline.

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220408/p2g/00m/0na/065000c