Quite the opposite phenomenon from 2020’s ‘No Japan’
As the road to overseas travel that was blocked by Corona 19 opens, the craze for traveling to Japan does not seem to cool down. In particular, it was found that a significant number of customers booked a long-term trip to Japan using the ‘Three Days’ holiday.
According to T’way Air, the average reservation rate for air tickets from Korea to Japan over the five days from the 25th of last month to the 1st of March, the last weekend of February, was 93%, virtually completely booked.
Jin Air and Jeju Air also had an average reservation rate of over 90% during the same period. Taking advantage of the fact that the March 1st holiday falls on a weekday, it seems that many people went on long-term trips to Japan with vacations on Mondays and Tuesdays.
According to the Japan National Tourism Organization, out of 1,497,000 foreigners who visited Japan last month, 565,000, or 37.7%, were Koreans.
Tickets for Japanese routes were close to full every month as the reservation rate marched high after Corona 19 quarantine regulations were eased in October of last year. On the first weekend that visa-free entry to Japan became possible, T’way Air’s passenger load rate on Japanese routes was over 95%. Korean Air, Asiana Airlines, and Jeju Air also had flights to Japan close to full.
In December 2020, when the aftermath of the ‘No Japan’ movement continued, in a survey by Embrain, a Korean polling agency, 70.1% of Koreans responded that they had participated in the boycott of Japanese products. 49.9% said ‘Japan is a hostile country’ and 55.7% of Koreans answered ‘I would not go to Japan no matter how cheap it is’.
However, the Japanese craze that is currently blowing in Korea is the exact opposite of this phenomenon.
In a survey conducted in December last year, 60.0% of the respondents said they participated in the ‘No Japan’ movement, 36.1% said that Japan is an enemy country, and 26.8% said they would not go to Japan.
Local media cited cheap airline tickets and the weak yen as reasons for the explosion in demand for Japanese tourism. In addition, it was analyzed that the weakness of the ‘No Japan’ movement also caused a Japanese tourism craze.
Reporter Lee Bo-hee
