Due to the ongoing tensions between China and Japan, the number of Chinese tourists travelling to Japan has sharply decreased, while the scale of Japanese traveling to China has also been greatly reduced. A Chinese tour operator from a major Japanese travel agency revealed that a wave of cancellations by tourists has emerged recently, coupled with significant cuts in China-Japan flights, resulting in a drastic 90% drop in the number of Japanese tourists. This has led to a significant decline in income for Mandarin-speaking tour guides in mainland China.
Last November, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takai proposed the “Taiwan Issue,” prompting strong reactions from the Chinese Communist Party, which continuously retaliated by urging mainland Chinese citizens to avoid traveling to Japan. In March this year, 2,691 flights from China to Japan were canceled, with a cancellation rate of around 50%. On the other hand, according to a report from Kyodo News on April 30, the number of Japanese tourists visiting China is decreasing significantly.
The Chinese tour operator from a major Japanese travel agency disclosed, “Due to the surge in cancellations and the reduction in Japanese flights, the number of Japanese customers has decreased by 90%. The triple blow of seat shortages due to flight reductions, cooling interest in traveling to China, and rising fuel costs due to the worsening situation in the Middle East has created a strong headwind.”
The number of Japanese tourists traveling to China had only recovered to half of the pre-COVID-19 levels of 2019.
Reportedly, in Shanghai, more than half of the Japanese group tours have been canceled after November last year. An analysis by the head of Japanese business at a large travel agency in Shanghai speculated that this may be due to safety concerns. Even for those with existing reservations, there have been cases of trips being canceled due to sudden flight cancellations, causing Japanese customer numbers to fluctuate around a 70% decrease year-on-year.
Incidents like the attacks on a bus carrying Japanese students in Suzhou and the death of a Japanese schoolboy in Shenzhen in the past years have raised safety concerns among Japanese people traveling to China.
Japanese-speaking tour guides working at tourist attractions in China are now facing a crisis of reduced income and unemployment. In Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, all direct flights have been suspended. A 57-year-old Chinese male tour guide who has been providing tour explanations in Japanese for about 30 years expressed disappointment, saying that he had not received a single Japanese tourist this year. Reportedly, a scheduled high school study tour group from Japan for April has also been canceled.
A male tour guide in Beijing mentioned that there have been nearly no Japanese customers since March, leading to a 90% reduction in income.
Japan used to be one of the main sources of inbound tourists for China. However, a Chinese tour operator pessimistically commented, “It will be difficult to recover as long as Sino-Japanese relations do not improve and flight numbers do not increase.”