FOLLOWING the agreement between aviation authorities in Beijing and Tokyo in May to permit additional flights between the two countries, All Nippon Airways (ANA) is ramping up its services to China to tap the surge in demand among Chinese tourists wanting to visit Japan.
The airline will launch a new daily route from Tokyo-Haneda to Guangzhou on October 25, while at the same time double its existing daily flight from Haneda to both Beijing and Shanghai.
“We are seeing a dramatic increase in the number of Chinese tourists wanting to come to Japan and we expect that growth to continue,” Maho Ito, a spokeswoman for ANA, told TTG Asia e-Daily.
She also played down concerns that bilateral tensions between the two governments or the recent devaluation of the Chinese currency will have a major impact on Chinese arrivals.
ANA believes that the new services will prove popular because Haneda’s connections to other parts of Japan will enable new arrivals to continue to destinations as far-flung as Sapporo in the north and Okinawa in the south.
“We can expect to see more Chinese tourists coming to Japan, but I also believe that if prime minister Shinzo Abe goes to Beijing for talks with Xi Jinping, then we will begin to see an increase in Japanese people going to China again,” said Motohisa Tachikawa, a spokesman for JTB Corp.
