Tourism Expo Japan Opens in Koto Ward, Tokyo; Countries Hoping for Increase in Japanese Tourists

The Yomiuri Shimbun

15:16 JST, September 27, 2024

“Tourism Expo Japan 2024,” one of the world’s largest tourism-related trade fairs, will be open to the public on Saturday and Sunday at Tokyo Big Sight in Koto Ward in the capital.

Overseas exhibitors will outnumber domestic exhibitors for the first time on the back of expectations for a recovery in Japanese tourists traveling overseas.

More than 1,000 companies and organizations from Japan and 80 countries and regions around the world will participate. Lines of booths rich in international diversity fill the venue, including one from Thailand featuring an image of a sightseeing train repurposed from a Japanese rail car, and another from Saudi Arabia where visitors can try their hands at Arabic calligraphy.

In 2023, Japanese tourists traveling abroad numbered 9.62 million. That figure is less than half the 20.08 million in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. From January to August this year, the number recovered to 8.28 million, more than 60% of the total from the same months in 2019, raising many countries’ hopes to receive an increase of tourists from Japan.

“The challenge is how to revive overseas travel,” said chairperson Hiroyuki Takahashi of the Japan Association of Travel Agents, the organizer of the event, at a press conference on Thursday. “The whole world is waiting for Japanese travelers.”