3.20 million versus 4.13 million. That's the numbers of tourists visiting Korea and Japan, respectively, for three months between January and March this year.
For five consecutive months since November last year, Japan is overtaking Korea in terms of inbound tourist numbers by an increasingly large margin. As recently as October last year, the number of foreign visitors to Korea was 3.6 percent higher than that for Japan. But it has since reversed and Japan now boasts more than a 20-percent margin over Korea.
According to the Japan National Tourism Organization, the total number of foreign visitors to Japan during the month of March was 1,526,000, up 45.3 percent from the same period last year. During the same period, the figure for Korea stopped short of rising 9.4 percent to 1,238,144. This is not a temporary anomaly. The number of foreign tourists arriving in Japan during the first quarter of this year was 4,131,400, 28.9 percent higher than that for Korea, which is 3,205,904.
It is not just total numbers that are inferior. The composition of foreign tourists coming in to Japan is much more varied than that for Korea. The ratio of Chinese tourists in total foreign visitors to Korea in the first quarter was 44.5 percent, or 1.44 million. This is almost triple that of Japanese tourists (501,151). During the same period, the number of Chinese tourists setting foot in Japanese soil was 920,000, accounting for only 22.4 percent in total.
What's notable about Japan's foreign tourist portfolio is the number of Southeast Asian tourists is rising fast. The share of tourists in Japan from eight Southeast Asian countries (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam) during the first quarter was 36.6 percent. The corresponding number for Korea was 20.4 percent.
Even Chinese tourists are slowly turning away from Korea and more toward Japan. According to a recent survey by Ctrip, China's largest online travel reservation site, about countries you want to go during the upcoming Labor Day holiday in early May, 60 percent of respondents picked Japan. The travel to Japan has now become "any time of the year" from specific holiday seasons such as the Lunar New Year's Day holiday.
The number of Chinese tourists visiting Japan during the one-month cherry blossom festival period between March 15 and April 15 was 350,000, up about 100 percent from the same period a year ago. This is almost the same level as the number of tourists from China during the New Year's Day holiday.
