Japan Tourism Continues to Boom

 Japan continues to be a popular choice for foreign tourists to visit in 2024 according to statistics issued by the Japanese National Tourism Agency.  

Kyoto wall to wall crowd. 

I've read online that it is the 8th most popular destination for American tourists in the last year and that there was a surge of  Gen Z tourists from China in the spring.  Before the pandemic almost 30% of tourists were from China, but those levels haven't returned.  Due to the cheaper yen, foreign tourists from other countries have taken up the slack.

The graph above shows tourists numbers to the end of June 2024.

According to other data released, the number of inbound tourists to Japan is about 3 million a month from March 2024 to the end of June 2024.  Additional reporting for July indicated 3.29 million visitors that month! These levels are likely to stay constant in the future too and numbers this year will likely exceed that of last year as there are still 5 months to go.  

From the graph above, you can see that they haven't broken 30 million visitors yet, the highest records set before the pandemic, but the numbers are climbing.  The over tourism problems they are experiencing are likely from concentrations of tourists in specific spots and the fact that labour is scarcer now than before the pandemic.  Japan's going to be a busy place for awhile.