Love Letter from Brussels
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Welcome (YOKOSO) to Japan! (No.19)
August 7, 2015
July is the start of the holiday season in Belgium and so I also took a break of 1 month for this column. Here in Belgium, we are still in the midst of the vacation, but from this month onwards, I will post again two articles every month. Well then, this time, in connection to vacation, let’s compare each country’s touristic situation.
Tourism in Japan (*1)
The number of people coming to Japan from abroad (Note: this is not limited to simply tourism) has been increasing by 20% for several consecutive years. In 2013, for the first time, the number of visitors exceeded ten million people. Last year in 2014, this number increased further with nearly 30% and reached the threshold of 13.4 million people.
© Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and TourismIf we analyze the data from 2014 by area of origin, we’ll find that Taiwan tops the list with a little over 2.8 million visitors to Japan, followed by South-Korea with 2.76 million and China with 2.4 million visitors. These top three alone account for approximately 60% of the total figure. Next are Hong Kong (930,000 people), the United States (890,000 people), followed by Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and other countries.
The top three of European countries consists of The United Kingdom (220,000 visitors), France (180,000) and Germany (145,000), followed by Italy and Russia. From Belgium, 19,000 people have visited Japan, which places the country 11th in the European charts. This may look very little, but in terms of population, it means that one in 580 Belgians visited Japan, which I think is a decent number. Either way, with the launch of ANA’s Brussels-Narita direct flight on 25 October, about which I talked previously, I expect this number to rise steadily. The Embassy as well will seize the opportunity of the 150th Anniversary of Friendship to further spark tourists’ interest in our country.
World Tourism: Number of People (*2)
Next, let’s turn our gaze to the world.
The country with the most visitors from abroad is France with 83.7 million tourists. The United States come second with 74.8 million visitors, followed by Spain on the third place with 65 million. On the fourth place, we find the highest ranking Asian country, China, with 55.6 million visitors and Italy on the fifth with 48.6 million. Japan is still on the 22nd place, though up 5 places from 27 in the previous year. Among the Asian countries, Japan holds the 7th place (after China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Macau and Korea). I think it is safe to say that Japan still has room for growth. Incidentally, the number of visitors to Belgium in 2013 reached 7.7 million people, nearly 60% of the Japanese figure. However, considering the population, Belgium welcomed a number of people equal to 70% of the country’s population, as opposed to Japan, where the number of visitors does not exceed 10% of its population.
Let us proceed comparing the number of visitors to the population of other areas.
If we exclude Hong Kong and Macau with their small populations, we find that there are four countries whose visitors exceed the total population of the country in the tourist top 20! Austria tops the list with three times as many visitors as its population; Greece comes second with 2.2 times as many tourists, followed by Spain on the third place and France on the fourth, each with respectively 1.4 and 1.3 times as many visitors! This is absolutely baffling, don’t you think?Extra Information on World Tourism: how about the purse strings? (*2)
The above numbers were based on figures by the UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organization). Actually, they have also published other interesting statistics.
Firstly, there’s the Tourist Income Ranking. This ranking shows how much revenue the country of destination receives. The USA stands out with the total revenue of 177 billion dollars in 2014. The past few years Spain has been taking the second place with 65 billion dollars. Until 2013, France held the third place but in 2014 they were overtaken by China’s close to 57 billion revenue stream and now stand on the fourth place with 55 billion dollars. Incidentally, Japan gains slightly less than 19 billion dollars in revenue and does not even make it to the top 10.
Finally, we’ll look at the tourism expenses. This ranking shows how much money tourists from a country spend during their travel. Here, China tops the list (=Visitors from China spend the largest amount of money during travel.) with approximately 165 billion dollars, with on the second place the USA (111 billion dollars) and third, Germany with 92 billion dollars. This top 3 has not changed in three years. Dear reader, what do you think? In any case, we will do our utmost best to promote tourism in Japan, knowing that there’s still a lot left to do.
Next year marks 150 years of friendship between Belgium and Japan and in 2020 Tokyo has the pleasure of hosting the Olympic Games. I encourage all Belgians to use the direct flight and visit Japan. “O-MO-TE-NA-SHI” is waiting for you.
(*) Source: Homepage of the Japan National Tourist Organization (JNTO)
(**) Source: UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organization), Total: (Tourism Highlights 2015 edition)
