Part 5.5. The statistical nail in my optimism’s coffin
See part 1 for an introduction. My experience as a small tour operator in Japan.
For a while now my wife has been mentally preparing for the need to work elsewhere to survive if business for us in the area doesn’t pick up. I am more stubborn, and I’ve held out as long as my optimism would let me, fighting until it didn’t make sense to fight the doubt. I was confident that we could find access to the right customer segment in time, giving us enough bookings to continue the business without needing to work any other jobs.
In late August of 2026, while doing some research online, I read an article that reinforced some unfortunate points and finally cracked through the remaining part of my optimism, and it inspired this reflective essay (as a coping mechanism). The below are points from this article that discusses a summit held in Tokyo in June 2026.
The first big point is that growth is slowing in the inbound market in Japan, regardless of the increasing number of foreign visitors. People are visiting, but their financial impact is not being felt in a proportional amount of growth.
Another point is that more guests are staying in major cities compared to regional areas. This may again be a sign that the experience in cities is enough for them, with the convenience that comes with cities. They are fine with the original horse and automobile. Regardless of the makeup of the visitor demographics, the statistics suggest a decline in attention on regional areas. From the article:
“In terms of total overnight stays by foreign visitors, the ratio between major metropolitan areas and regional areas — which stood at approximately 60:40 in 2019 — has shifted to roughly 70:30, with a particularly notable concentration of visitors in Tokyo.”
Statistics show no increase in the percentage of spending on activities (like tours and experiences), even with more availability (on OTAs for example) and significant amounts of funding spent on developing products across Japan. Even with the faulty systems described earlier in this series, this was surprising. More money is being spent on accommodation on a trip, with less on shopping. Entertainment (which includes activities) hasn’t changed much since before the pandemic, about 4.5% of spending. With more people spending more time in the cities, it makes sense that we struggle to get a great number of bookings when we need to fall into the 4.5% of spending of a decreasing proportion of visitors that come to regional areas like ours.
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The Tourism Bureau found that visitors rated information about events and experiences in Japan “extremely poorly,” which is surprising considering the efforts by many operators to have active social media accounts, and experiences available on OTAs. Those same visitors rated information about transport routes and restaurants highly, which raises even more questions. I feel that the expectations of visitors about events and experiences doesn’t match the way information can be found, or that visitors have little motivation to search for information on these, unlike information about transport and restaurants that they are often required to search for to get anywhere or eat. This is supported by the small percentage of money spent on activities, despite the popularity of OTAs and the mass of information on social media.
Many also appear to be turning to OTAs for solutions to some of these problems, which does nothing to overcome the issues I discussed earlier, and it only moves to further silo operators and regions into those that work with OTAs and those that do not.
As a damning result of the above, and contrary to the wave of articles that claim that more tourists means more regional development, a major speaker at the summit summed up the situation: “Tourist satisfaction is not rising, nor is the contribution to local economies being tangibly felt under the circumstance.”
The government at many levels knows they should do something about these issues, but in no way should any countryside operators trust that the government will help in the long term.
In the next part (Part 6)
Insights for those in a similar predicament and conclusions. Here’s a link.
