Credit: Tokyo 2020 Bid Committee
THE Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and Paralympics may still be five years away, but the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) is already making plans to reap the rewards years after the world’s largest sporting event comes to town.
“London and Barcelona were both successful on building their tourism sectors after hosting the Olympic Games and we are hoping to follow in London’s footsteps,” Shuichi Kameyama, executive director of JNTO’s inbound promotion department, told TTG Asia e-Daily.
“I expect to keep our momentum in the run-up to 2020 and to use that time to build up our tourism infrastructure, both in terms of hardware and software. I think that Japanese people will become more used to interacting with foreign visitors and the industry will become more skilled,” he said. “This will help to improve the overall experience of visitors and enable us to kick on after 2020.”
Speaking exclusively with TTG Asia e-Daily at the Visit Japan Travel & MICE Mart 2015 in Tokyo, Kameyama admitted that JNTO has already set its sights on longer-term targets.
“It’s not easy to foresee the state of the industry in 2030, but we do have a preliminary target of 30 million visitors in that year,” he confirmed.
Certain obstacles need to be overcome however, said Kameyama, the foremost being to find new destinations for inbound travellers.
“We’re already facing capacity in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto at certain times of the year and we need to disperse visitors to other regions,” he said. “Additionally, inbound tourism has become critically important to our economy and we need to spread that economic benefit to other areas.”
The JNTO has recently selected seven areas – eastern Hokkaido, Tohoku, Chubu, Kansai, the Inland Sea area, Shikoku and Kyushu – as new tourism routes.
“Some of these areas are already fairly well developed, but we want to get them better known,” said Kameyama.
