TOKYO: The Japanese government aims to boost consumption by tourists from abroad to 200,000 yen per person by 2025, when the World  Expo will be held in the western Japan city of Osaka.

The target is included in a new tourism promotion basic plan adopted at a cabinet meeting Friday. The target level is up about 40,000 yen from per-capita spending by foreign tourists to Japan in 2019, before the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic, which has dealt a devastating blow to the tourism sector.

The new plan, which covers fiscal 2023-2025, also calls on the government to work to increase foreign tourists to regional areas, setting a target of two nights per person for their stay at locations outside Japan’s three metropolitan areas, up from 1.4 nights in 2019.

As a way to achieve the targets, the plan calls for intensively providing visitors from abroad with experience-based tourism opportunities featuring Japan’s nature and culture across the country.

In light of uncertainty over the COVID-19 situation down the road, the basic plan stopped short of showing a specific target for the annual number of visitors to Japan, saying only that the government aims to attract more foreigners than in 2019, when a record 31.88 million people traveled to the Asian nation.

Jiji Press