Japan welcomed around 21.1 million foreign visitors in the first six months of 2026, a 2.0% drop from last year and down for the first time in five years,?the Japan National Tourism Organization said Wednesday.
While the first-half visitor tally?topped 20 million for the second straight year, Japan saw a 56.4% drop in visitors from China as?Beijing continues to call on its citizens to avoid traveling to Japan.
Of the?21.1 million visitors in the January-June period, 2.06 million visitors came from mainland China. Visitors from?South Korea increased by?18.6% to?5.7 million, while those?from Taiwan numbered?around 4 million, up 20.9%.
In June alone, the estimated number of inbound visitors dropped 6.8% from a year before to 3.15 million, the third straight monthly decrease. The number of visitors from China decreased for the seventh successive month. In contrast, visitor numbers from South Korea and Taiwan hit respective record highs for June.
Meanwhile, the Japan Tourism Agency said the same day that spending by foreign visitors increased 0.2% from a year before to around ?2.5 trillion in the April-June quarter. Spending per visitor rose 3.3% to ?244,457, setting a quarterly record high.
Hotel operator Mori Trust estimates that the annual number of foreign visitors to Japan will total around 40.50 million to 42 million in 2026, below last year¡¯s record high of 42.68 million.
According to the company, hotel bookings are robust for summer and autumn, although airlines raised fuel surcharges for international flights in response to turmoil in the Middle East.
Mori Trust President and CEO Miwako Date said, ¡°(Reservations) are unlikely to decrease drastically, and on the contrary, the weak yen has a strong (positive) impact (on reservations).¡±
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