As Japan cheers reopening, weak yen is both good and bad news for travel sector

Name: Japan to lift Covid restrictions on foreign tourists from October 11
Uploaded: 2022-10-10T23:00:07.000Z
Duration: 1 min 51 s
Description: Japan to lift Covid restrictions on foreign tourists from October 11

Travel bosses are delighted visitors are back, but some worry ‘budget’ visitors will flood Japan due to the weak yen, and at a time workers are ‘out of practice’

Bookings rocketed after Tokyo said rules would end, with Australians, South Koreans being urged to visit and the PM urging everyone to spend

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A geisha walks along a Tokyo street. Photo: AP

Julian Ryall

Published: 7:00am, 11 Oct 2022Updated: 1:08pm, 11 Oct 2022

Relief and delight swept Japan’s travel sector after the country reopened to tourists without restrictions on Tuesday, amid some trepidation that the weak yen would contribute to too many tourists.

Travellers no longer need to obtain a visa or submit a negative PCR test to enter the country, while the 50,000-a-day limit on arrivals has been abolished.

“We are delighted,” said Masaru Takayama, president of the Kyoto-based Spirit of Japan Travel. “The entire industry welcomes this development because it has been a very long and very hard three years for the sector.”

Takayama said his company had been “inundated” with requests for information from prospective travellers as well as bookings, including a good number of reservations that are being made “several months in advance”.

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Japan to lift Covid restrictions on foreign tourists from October 11

Kumiko Yamada, from Kagawa’s Tourism Promotion Division, echoed that optimism for operators and venues in Japan’s smallest prefecture.