JAPAN ABOLICISHES VISAS TO ENCOURAGE TOURISM
The Japanese government is taking action to give new impetus to tourism, launching a policy aimed at attracting as many visitors as possible from abroad. The tourism industry is in fact one of the pillars of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's strategy to give new impetus to the country's economic growth.
With this in mind, it was decided to encourage the influx of tourists from nearby Southeast Asia, abolishing the cumbersome visa system hitherto in place to allow entry of people from countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam. Through this and other initiatives, Japan is trying to achieve the ambitious goal of having 20 million tourist entries per year in the period leading up to the 2020 Olympic Games. Last year, after visa-free tourists from Thailand and Malaysia , the tourist flow from these two countries to Japan increased by 61% from the previous year. This result has contributed to Japan reaching a record figure of 10 million visitors in one year.
The government's decision on visas comes after the Japan Tourism Agency warned that if we were to aim for the 20 million annual visitor mark, every effort had to be made to attract more tourists from Southeast Asian countries. From the abolition of visas for Indonesians, Filipinos and Vietnamese, we therefore expect, in the wake of what happened for Malaysia and Thailand, a significant increase in tourist arrivals, since the three countries are already now among those, together with China, which send Japan the highest number of visitors. However, Japan's visa policy was soon copied by South Korea, which, rivaling Japan as a favorite tourist destination in Northeast Asia, promptly proceeded to simplify the procedures for obtaining visas or, in some cases, to abolish visas themselves.
Attached: bangkok post
