Japan’s ‘golden week’ holiday season starts early, as citizens make up for time lost in Covid

Around 24.5 million Japanese – more than in 2019 – plan to take a trip for at least one night during the golden week holiday, which officially starts on May 3

With coronavirus restrictions lifted, overseas visitors are also returning, even as an expert cautions ‘from a healthcare perspective, we still need to be careful’

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Travellers at Haneda Airport in Tokyo. Millions of people in Japan are on the move for the “golden week” holidays. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 5:00pm, 1 May 2023Updated: 8:33pm, 1 May 2023

Japan’s “golden week” holidays began early as hordes of travel-starved people packed airports and train stations over the weekend to head back to their hometowns or visit popular destinations including Okinawa and Hokkaido.

Many took the first two days of the working week off to make the most of the holiday season, which begins on Wednesday and lasts until May 5.

Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways reported that bookings to domestic destinations over the holiday season had recovered significantly and stood at around 90 per cent of the figure for 2019, the last golden week before the coronavirus pandemic caused chaos in the travel industry.

Research by domestic travel giant JTB Corp showed that around 24.5 million Japanese planned to holiday for at least one night in Japan during the golden week season, more than in 2019.

Overseas travel, however, still lags significantly behind 2019 levels, with airlines indicating that outbound holidays were only around 60 per cent of five years ago. On the positive side, airline studies suggest that people are not opting to stay at home out of concern about contracting the virus, but making that choice due to high flight prices because of fuel surcharges combined with the weak yen, making trips abroad more costly.

“This is the first ‘proper’ golden week holiday that we have been able to enjoy since 2019 and everyone is very happy to see travel restrictions being relaxed,” said Kazuhiro Ito, an official with the Japan Association of Travel Agents, adding that while travel overseas “is only coming back slowly, travel within Japan is very busy over the holiday season as everyone wants to go somewhere again” after the difficult pandemic period.