The number of foreign tourists visiting Japan in 2009 tumbled 18.7 percent year-on-year to 6.79 million visitors, according to a report issued by Japan's National Tourism Organization (JNTO) on Monday.
The 2009 figures mark the first drop in foreign tourists visiting Japan for six years and is the first time since 1986, when the yen's value shot up against the dollar causing tourists to veto Japan as a travel destination, that the percentage decline has reached double-digits.
The global economic downturn and the spread of the A/H1N1 strain of influenza contributed to the falling numbers of foreign tourists visiting Japan last year and subsequently the government may be hard pushed to reach their target of attracting 10 million tourists this year, sources with knowledge of the matter said.
However, in a bid to address the plunging numbers of tourists, the Japan Tourism Agency (JTA), a subsidiary organization of the Ministry of
Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism of Japan ( MLIT), has started work on a strategy to quadruple the number of foreign visitors to Japan by 2019.
The JTA recently upgraded the target numbers of foreign visitors to 15 million in 2013, 20 million in 2016 and 25 million in 2019.