The sun rises on Japan tourism

Suddenly, bookings started to appear on Yuka Hashizume’s calendar.

What had been blank white squares under October, November, December — even stretching into 2023 — became dotted with tour dates for groups, for individuals, for a particular kind of traveler most Japanese tour guides had not seen for quite a while: English speakers.

“Suddenly, it began for me. It became very busy,” said Hashizume, an official Japanese tour guide who works with Alexander + Roberts, recalling how her calendar filled with tour dates in a matter of days after two-and-a- half years with no groups. 

Last month, Hashizume led a small group of nine American travelers, myself included, on Alexander + Roberts’ first tour to operate in Japan since April 2020, an 11-day itinerary called From Japan’s Inland Sea to the Alps. 

It was also Hashizume’s first tour in almost three years. Understandably, she was a little nervous.

“I’m excited, of course, but I also worried, ‘Can I guide them after three years?’ That was really a big problem for me,” she said. “For three years, I haven’t spoken any English. So maybe I forgot a lot of things.”

Jokingly, I asked Hashizume if she had practiced in the mirror before leading her first group. She laughed, reassuring me that her worries disappeared after the first day in Kyoto. “I thought, ‘Oh, maybe I can.’” 

The long-awaited return 

Japan fully reopened to international tourism on Oct. 11, ending nearly three years of one of the most rigorous border-control programs in the world during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Things went back to normal, so to speak, after the 11th; international travelers could once again freely visit Japan without needing to jump through a slew of regulatory hoops to enter the country. Gone were requirements around visas, testing requirements regardless of vaccination status, travel insurance requirements, international arrival caps and having to travel in packaged tour groups. 

Our tour group arrived seven days before the official reopening, on Oct. 4. 

Stepping off the plane felt almost like landing on the moon. I was unsure of what I would encounter and proceeded with caution, even slight trepidation, wondering if I was clean enough to enter this pristine environment, untouched for so long by the rest of the world. I was acutely aware of my breathing: Would a cough or a clearing of my throat alert the airport’s health officials, clad in hazmat-like protection, that a Westerner had arrived threatening to plunge the country into lockdown again? 

Maybe. Still, any lingering hesitations I had were overshadowed by the sheer excitement of exploring a part of the world unknown to me. The masked officials greeting me at the airport were welcoming and helpful when it came to navigating the long, winding path of checkpoints to get out of the terminal. 

At long last, I made my way to Kyoto, ready to embark on a different kind of space odyssey.

Surge in demand after reopening

News of Japan’s official reopening date, which came on Sept. 23, almost immediately fueled demand for trips to the country, industry analysts and tour operators reported.

Search demand from the U.S. to Japan on Google Flights “grew 84% compared to the 14 previous days,” according to Felix Genatio, senior business data analyst at travel tech provider Dohop, with the California, Hawaii and New York markets particularly strong. 

Scott Avera, president of Alexander + Roberts, said 2023 bookings for Japan are currently at 98% of 2019 levels and that 57% of those bookings are new business. Japan specialist Esprit Travel’s tours calendar is booked solid between next March and June, mostly with rebookings from 2020 through this year, and they’re turning people away for bookings through June, said president Elaine Baran.

I was with one of those groups that included Americans who had been waiting for the country to reopen since the early days of the pandemic. 

Bill and Kay Carmichael of Chicago originally booked their Alexander + Roberts Japan tour in 2018 for March 2020. 

“We did not find out about the initial cancellation until about three weeks before the March [tour],” said Kay Carmichael. “We kept waiting and waiting to hear, and after that, it was just sort of expected because Japan was closed.”

The couple almost didn’t even make it onto the Oct. 4 departure because it was originally fully booked with the maximum number of 16 guests. But travelers still hesitant and who preferred to experience a fully reopened Japan without any restrictions decided to postpone their fall departure, creating space for the Carmichaels.

“We would have had to go next April,” said Bill Carmichael. “So we said, let’s just get in.” 

Being on the ground in Japan while its pandemic restrictions were still in place and then shortly after they were lifted felt as subtle as when we Americans roll back the clocks for daylight saving time: I couldn’t really tell the difference. In general, the pandemic is still more openly part of public consciousness in Japan than it has been on my recent trips in Europe and North America: Masks are still widely encouraged and frequently used, especially indoors and in crowded outdoor areas, although not required. Wearing one felt like the polite and respectful thing to do. And anyone planning to visit should pack a small bottle of hand lotion so as to not dry out from the frequent hand-sanitizing you’ll be asked to do essentially everywhere you go for the foreseeable future. 

Signs of a return to normalcy

So while the reopening was clearly something important that had just happened — essentially overnight — that would have a ripple effect on the everyday world around you, nothing seemed to change at all. 

That feeling was reinforced at some of the most popular tourist attractions, including the various temples, imperial palaces and shogun castles that my tour group visited throughout Japan. Whether it was Nijo Castle in Kyoto or Todaiji in Nara, it was almost as if tourism numbers had recovered tenfold, given the number of schoolchildren I saw. 

Our guide, Hashizume, was surprised to see so many of them, too, and told us they were likely on long-delayed school field trips. 

Rivaling the droves of schoolchildren that I saw in most places around Japan were the herds of friendly deer that I came across on the island of Miyajima in Hiroshima Prefecture and in the city of Nara. 

The deer, which are revered animals in Japan, pillaged our pockets looking for snacks, sweetly gnawing and nibbling at our clothes, trailing us if they weren’t having any luck.

Yes, I can marvel at the splendor — the awesome majesty — of five-story Buddha statues made of bronze, of 1,000-year-old pagodas and temples with histories longer than some civilizations, but put a furry pack of friendly animals in front of me? Game over. 

Visiting Japan can be slightly intimidating for the very reasons the country is so storied, with its history, traditions, art, religions and way of life; sometimes I wasn’t sure how to really appreciate it all at once. But while I had prayed at a Buddhist temple and made sure to clap twice at a Shinto shrine, I felt right at home offering some rice crackers to a few aggressively sweet and hungry deer. 

As our tour started to come to a close during our final nights in Tokyo’s Shinjuku City, I struggled with a thought: How am I going to remember all of this? 

We saw so much; our time was so little. We trekked through mountainous valleys. We sped on bullet trains through the countryside. We cooked our meals. Played drinking games with geishas (and lost, or is that winning?). I ate unholy amounts of ramen and surprisingly not enough sushi. I walked to the top of Fushimi Inari Shrine and soaked myself in every neon-lit street I could find in Tokyo, which obviously wasn’t hard. And kabuki! What a performance of Japan’s traditional stage play (think Broadway, but Japanese style, and with male actors only). 

If there’s one thing I want to remember from this trip, it’s the advice from Hashizume after she told me that the last nearly-three years were some of the hardest she’s ever had: See everything. Eat everything. Try everything. 

“Even if it looks strange, try just one bite. Walk around by yourself in the town. Meet the new culture, the new food,” she said. “That is what I want for all of the travelers. Try.”

High airfares make selling Japan a challenge for advisors right now

Travel advisors booking Japan will find that despite tailwinds in demand, there are challenges to selling the country.

For now, at least, in-country costs are not among the big ones.

Japan has long been considered one of the most expensive vacation destinations in the world, at least, up until recently. A weakened yen and strong dollar has made it a more budget-friendly holiday than in years past.

The trick is being able to afford getting there. Travelers may be hard-pressed to find reasonable airfares as airline tickets have soared to eye-watering levels due to limited flight options, high oil prices and the war in Ukraine among the factors, according to Frederic Pilloud, director of marketing and e-commerce at travel technology group Digitrips. 

For Japan specifically, a lack of competition in pricing, fostered by limited flight availability is also at play, said Elaine Baran, president of Japan specialist Esprit Travel, and is keeping costs high as airlines work to revive their dormant Japan routes.

“I’ve had a lot of people give up after checking flight costs. Business-class fares especially, as they’ve gone from about $4,000 to over $12,000,” Baran said, adding that 60% to 80% of her clients, who skew older, won’t fly economy on long-haul flights. “Most couples don’t want to spend more for two airline tickets than they do for their entire two-week trip. No flight is worth that much money.”

Travelers who do make it to Japan should have better luck finding hotel vacancies as the industry recovers from operating below ideal occupancy levels for nearly three years.

Preferred Hotels & Resorts, which represents a number of properties across Japan, said occupancy rates across its portfolio were at half of 2019 levels in October. But that’s not expected to last. Cheryl Williams, Preferred’s chief revenue officer, said figures are looking stronger going into 2023, saying there was an “immediate return to travel” after the country said it was reopening. Preferred’s 2023 booking pace is up by close to 300%, with two of its Tokyo hotels, Shibuya Excel Hotel Tokyu and Keio Plaza Hotel Tokyo, leading the way, Williams said. 

Satoshi Machida, director of sales at the Keio Plaza, located in Shinjuku City, said that the 1,440-room hotel began seeing 1,000 bookings a day for 2023 stays following the Sept. 23 announcement that Japan would reopen in October. It’s a significant turnaround for the hotel, whose international client base makes up about 80% of its business, and its occupancy rate has operated below 50% since the pandemic started.

“The booking pace is incredible,” said Yuka Saito, the Keio Plaza’s sales manager. “We are happy to see the booking numbers increasing everyday, mostly for March and April for the cherry blossom season.”

—N.E.