Japan visitor arrivals plunge

Japan’s quake-tsunami disaster and nuclear emergency have led to a record 62.5%t plunge in foreign tourists, a government agency said Thursday.

There were an estimated 295,800 overseas visitors in April, down from 788,000 in April 2010, a second straight decline following a 50.3% year-on-year drop in March, the Japan National Tourism Organisation said.

The March 11 tsunami knocked out the cooling systems of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northwest Japan and emergency crews have been battling since to stop it leaking radiation into the air and the Pacific Ocean.“Details of the great earthquake have been reported in a big way around the world minute-by-minute, shocking the people of the world,” the organisation said in a press release.

“In particular, the nuclear power plant accident has heightened worries about safety and security, which are essential to travel.”Since mid-April, some group tours have resumed from China and Southeast Asia, the organisation said.

“Unless the impact of the Fukushima nuclear accident is completely erased, consumers’ worries are expected to linger,” Naoki Morikawa, the organisation’s planning official, told AFP.“It is not that all of Japan is unsuitable for travel. We will continue to provide accurate information.”

The margin of decline in April was the biggest since the organisation started compiling data 50 years ago. The 50.3% drop in March was the previous record.It is the first time that the number of foreign tourists has slipped below 300,000 since May 2003 when fears of the respiratory disease SARS curtailed international travel worldwide.

Source = ttrweekly