In the 21st century, international tourism has gained wide scope. Almost 700 million tourists spend $500 billion on their travels annually. According to estimates, by 2020 their number will grow to 1.5 billion people, and the services market will amount to $2 trillion. At the same time, reports Travel.ru, Japan's successes in the tourism market are quite modest.
Thus, in 2001, 16 million Japanese went abroad, while only 5 million foreigners visited the Land of the Rising Sun. Accordingly, the Japanese left $31.5 billion abroad, while foreigners left only $3.4 billion in Japan. In 1998, 15.8 million Japanese traveled abroad, of whom 13 million went on tourist trips. And of the 4.6 million foreigners who visited Japan then, tourists accounted for 2.1 million. Half of foreign tourists came to Japan from Asian countries. From Europe came 483 thousand tourists, from the USA - 261 thousand.
So far, Japan remains in 34th place in the world in the number of foreign tourists it receives. One of the reasons for this, although not the main one, is the non-compliance of Japanese tourism infrastructure with world standards.
This is most vividly illustrated by the situation in the hotel business. In 1999, Japan had 79.5 thousand European and national hotels, temple lodgings, and private guesthouses. Almost a million people were employed in serving tourists in them. The problem is that the vast majority of these facilities are adapted exclusively for serving domestic tourism and proceed from the national characteristics of Japanese life. Of the 79.5 thousand hotel facilities, 60.4 thousand were Japanese national hotels - ryokans. They were designed for a million guests, and 860 thousand service personnel were employed in them. This number did not include the temple lodgings for tourists mentioned above (shukubo) and guesthouses (minshuku). Ryokans are characterized by the lack of usual European comfort - for example, beds and ordinary furniture in the rooms. Even more specific living conditions are in shukubo. There they are almost Spartan: all communal amenities are moved out of the rooms into the corridors, and tourists are fed monastic vegetarian food.
Of the 60.4 thousand ryokans, only 10.5 thousand were admitted to two nationwide associations of Japanese traditional inns, and only 2 thousand of them passed state certification, i.e., more or less met foreign tourism standards. As for European-style hotels, only 600 out of 6 thousand passed state certification. Of course, ryokans provide a good opportunity to get acquainted with the national characteristics of Japanese life and leisure. But not all guests who come to the country can tolerate such exoticism. The Japanese tourism business is solving this problem by building large modern hotels that combine Western service standards with the national specifics of ryokans. However, the number of such hotels does not yet meet the needs of mass foreign tourism in Japan.
However, the main problems hindering the development of tourism in Japan lie elsewhere. For many foreign tourists, Japan is still a product that is “hard to sell.” Difficulties arise because of the high cost in the country, including the high price of hotel rooms (from $200 per night in decent hotels). In addition, besides the language barrier, Japan has the image of a country that treats foreigners coolly.
The Japanese government and business are making great efforts to change the current situation. The next impetus for this was the organization of the World Exhibition “Expo-2005” in Aichi. During its preparation, a special headquarters was created to conduct the “Visit Japan” campaign, whose goal is to double the number of foreign tourists to Japan by 2010. Outside Japan, this campaign is most actively conducted in the USA, China, South Korea, and Taiwan. In the USA, for example, in 2004, with the assistance of leading tour operators, a sale of discounted tours to Japan was organized, with simultaneous discounts on air tickets.
In 2004, the Japanese government allocated 3.4 billion yen to improve tourism infrastructure. With these funds, for example, the equipment of all stations of the capital's metro with signs in English was completed. Preparations have been made to issue a reduced-fare railway pass for foreign tourists and to reduce hosting prices for websites of travel companies. Measures are being taken to solve the problem of using foreign credit cards in Japan (most of them still do not work in the country for technical reasons). In addition, the government has identified ten areas in Japan that are most attractive to foreign tourists, for which the most favorable conditions are being created. The central place among them is occupied by the vicinity of Mount Fuji (Shizuoka, Kanagawa, and Yamanashi prefectures). Special discount cards for foreign tourists have already been issued, providing discounts at 211 hotels, restaurants, and museums located in the Fuji-Hakone-Izu natural park.
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