Tourists walk on the slopes of Sannenzaka on Sunday, June 26, 2022, in Kyoto, Japan.
Kosuke Okahara | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Japan’s tourist spending has broken annual records in just nine months, official data showed on Wednesday, illustrating the economic power of a tourism boom fueled by a weak yen.
Preliminary data from the Japan National Tourism Organization shows that tourists spent 5.86 trillion yen ($39.27 billion) through September. That surpassed the 5.3 trillion yen spent in all of 2023 and was a record for any 12-month period.
Tourism spending, classified as exports in national statistics accountis expected to become Japan’s second largest export industry, second only to automobiles and leading electronic components.
According to data from July to September, tourists spent an average of 223,000 yen on their trips. Italians spend the most, followed by Spaniards and Russians.
JNTO data showed that the number of tourists in September was 2.87 million, slightly lower than the 2.93 million in August.
Arrivals have set new monthly records since February, with July’s record high of 3.29 million arrivals in a single month.
As of September, 26.88 million tourists have arrived in Japan, already surpassing the 2023 total and on track to break the previous record of 31.9 million set in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic led to global border closures.
