Has Postponing the Summer Olympics Stifled Japan's Ambitious Tourism Plans?
Skift Take
This was supposed to be the year when Japan's dedicated tourism push came to fruition with the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. But even with the postponement — and all the uncertainty — of the Games until 2021, the tourism groundwork laid by Japan is still likely to bear fruit.
At the beginning of this year, Japan was gearing up to meet an ambitious goal by year's end: to welcome 40 million tourists, the country's highest-ever visitor count.
Seven months into the year, and you can add that goal to the long list of dashed hopes wrought by the pandemic. Indeed, it was this week that the Tokyo 2020 Olympics were meant to begin. The Games would have served as the capstone moment of Japan's several-years-long strategy to open up the country to a broader array of visitors by hosting large-scale global events intended to widen the country's appeal and perceived accessibility. By all accounts, that strategy had been working.
A pared-down Olympics have now been rescheduled for July 2021, but there is still a genuine measure of doubt about whether they will take place all. The head of the Japan Medical Association has said the 2021 Games should be contingent on a vaccine being available, and Olympic officials have indicated they won't reschedule the Games for a second time if they can't take place a year from now. Furthermore, surveys show that not all Japanese want the games to go forward at all.
However, even in a worst case scenario — the Games don't go forward — Japan's long-term tourism play may remain unscathed. The Japan National Tourism Organization, the nation's government-funded tourism board, confirmed for Skift that while the 2020 benchmark has been frozen for now, a longer-term goal of reaching 60 million annual visitors by 2030 still stands.
Preparation for the Games — which included making Japan more linguistically accessible, improving infrastructure, and widening accommodation options like Airbnb — may prove more important for tourism than the Games themselves, Kei Shibata, co-founder and CEO of the largest tr
