EXCLUSIVE: Japan to Bolster Tohoku Promotion for Foreign Visitors

August 22, 2018

Tokyo- Japan's Reconstruction Agency will help travel firms in the Tohoku northeastern region sell tourism products overseas, in a bid to increase the number of foreign visitors to the disaster-hit region, informed sources told Jiji Press.

The agency aims to help these firms learn know-how for introducing their products and organizing tour plans tailored to individual itineraries before the government's campaign for supporting the region's reconstruction from the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami finishes at the end of fiscal 2020, the sources said.

The agency plans to seek necessary funds in its budget request for fiscal 2019, which starts next April.

Since fiscal 2016, the agency has operated more than 30 model projects to help travel firms in Tohoku attract visitors from abroad, including organizing tours featuring folk religions, fruit-picking activities and the "bushido" samurai moral code.

After reviewing those projects in fiscal 2019, the agency plans to promote popular tours across the six Tohoku prefectures of Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Akita, Yamagata and Fukushima.

The agency will help local travel firms and major operators with expertise in overseas sales work together to lure visitors and promote tours unique to the region, according to the sources.

The effort will focus on offering tours to encourage non-Japanese visitors who travel in Tokyo and Osaka to proceed to Tohoku.

In 2017, the number of foreign visitors who made stay-over trips in the six Tohoku prefectures totaled some 950,000, up some 90 pct from 2010, but the figure accounted for only 1.3 pct of the total for the whole country. Jiji Press